Don't Break the Needle
by Xinthos
Summary: On a mission to take down a group of illicit drug dealers, Sakura tries to unravel the mystery ingredient in Konoha's new favorite recreational poison. Ino is just plain unraveling. [InoSaku].
1. Day 41

**A/N : **Do-do-do… just gonna put this here… I'm still working on my other story ( _If I Were Me_ ), for any of you reading it, so no worries there. My brain just went loco and this is what came out of it. This will be about 15 chapters when it's finished, and yes, it's named after an awesome song by J. Roddy Walston & the Business. :)

Rating: M for sex and drugs. Woo! Though I promise there's a plot in there somewhere.

Genre: Drama/Romance/sometimes humor. The mood will change drastically from chapter to chapter as I mess around with time skips, so if either of those things bothers you, turn awayyyyy.

Pairing: InoSaku.

Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto.

Obligatory statement: Don't do drugs, folks. Not even the fun ones.

Happy reading!

* * *

 **...**

 **Day 41:**

They're on a mission. It's something that Sakura finds she needs to repeat to herself. If they weren't on a mission, if their careers and the wellbeing of their fellow shinobi weren't on the line, she wouldn't be doing this.

Because it's really fucking hard to watch.

In fact, even taking into consideration all that's at stake, it's _still_ really fucking hard to watch. She used to think the day she looked at Ino and felt pity searing the inside of her chest would be the day the sky burst into flames, but no. It's today. A Tuesday. Nothing special.

Ino is skinnier now than she's ever been, even thinner than on that ridiculous cabbage soup diet years ago. The bones of her pelvis push prominently against her skin. A deep inhalation reveals profound grooves between her ribs. Her clothes, normally fitted tight to her body, now fall about her frame in places like a shirt on a hanger. Fifteen pounds in a little over five weeks. In any other context, Ino might've been proud.

Now, though, Sakura can see every curve, every press of bone, the veins against her neck flush with the skin and pulsing desperately in her anger. She's soaked in the shower and she doesn't remember why. The time lapses are getting worse.

"What the hell, Forehead? You can't just –"

"You pissed yourself."

The fire on Ino's tongue is doused in an instant. She blinks, slowly, trying to recall the event. Her synapses fire at half speed. She can't remember.

"I wouldn't…"

Sakura gives her a look. She's not happy about this, either; she had to get in the shower fully clothed to help Ino regain consciousness. It worked, but she's not sure it matters.

"You did," Sakura says firmly. Jaw clenched, water dripping from her chin, bangs in her eyes. She's pissed. "Right in the middle of a seizure."

She nearly broke the side of her skull against the wall before Sakura rushed in to cushion her head. But, of course, Ino doesn't remember how she'd collapsed onto their tarp-covered mattress in the middle of an argument, back arching, lips turning blue before the convulsions began. She seized like someone strapped a defibrillator to her heart. Not a second went by that Sakura didn't fear it would simply stop beating.

Which is exactly why they were arguing in the first place.

The problem is that Ino can't see herself. She doesn't recognize the terrible things that are happening to her anymore – the edges of her teeth blunted from constant grinding, the explosive mood swings, the paranoia and the memory lapses – all she remembers is that, at one point, she'd felt very, very good. And now she doesn't. She only cares about getting that back.

Already, her muscles are tensed in preparation to bolt out the door. She's tried half-a-dozen times now, but she's far, far too slow with her chakra network singed and knotted like a clump of fine hairs. Sakura caught her at each attempt and felt, each time, the fragility of her body weakly struggling. She let Ino thump her fists against her head. Scream terrible names. Remind her why Sasuke is gone and she couldn't do a damn thing about it.

She doesn't fight back, though. Ino is dying. Sakura doesn't want to be the reason why.

"Ino," she warns. "Don't even think about it."

But it's all she _can_ think about. "Don't be such a prude, Forehead. It's only –"

Sakura cuts her off.

"One more time?" She tongues the back of her teeth irately. "You're being a damn idiot. It's a _drug_. That's what _addicts_ say."

"It's not _just_ a drug, Sakura. I'm not addicted to heroine, for fuck's sake –"

"What difference does it make?" Sakura shouts, throwing her hands out and splattering water onto the filthy bathroom floor. The grout between the tiles had probably been white at some point. "The type of drug doesn't matter! You're going to die if you –"

"I'm going to die if I _don't_."

Sakura purses her lips. Tightens her fists around her resolve. She doesn't cry. "No. You won't."

"You don't know that," Ino whispers, and the truth is like the flat of a knife against her skin. It doesn't hurt – yet. But it might soon. "If I'm going to die anyway, you can at least let me die in peace."

"It's not peace! It's a drug that's manipulating your hormones and your chakra and – and you! You can't just –"

Ino shoves her, hard, but Sakura sticks her feet to the slippery bathtub and it's Ino that winds up pitching backwards. Her shoulder hits the wall and her legs buckle underneath her, and Sakura carefully, _very_ carefully, catches her before her head can hit the faucet. Ino is squeezing her eyes shut. Her muscles are solid as pancake batter. Sakura, supporting both their weight in an odd position, lowers them to the graying floor of the tub.

 _Are we that dirty, or was the tub always like this?_ Sakura tries to remember. Her eyes wander to the ashen shower curtain, the molding sink faucet, the yellowed rim of the toilet, anywhere but Ino's face until she's run out of distractions. Ino's eyelids are twitching and, finally, she opens her eyes, and Sakura knows the redness and the moisture are not from the shower. Her blond hair seems to be everywhere. Wet, it latches on to every surface, up Sakura's arms to her shoulders. It sticks to the ceramic tub, the off-white tiling and Ino's bare chest, all the way down to her stomach.

It's odd, Sakura thinks, her gaze flickering from Ino to anywhere else at all as if the nude woman in her arms is a high-powered spotlight she can't quite stare into. She looks so different with her hair wet. Now, damp and sticking to her forehead, framing her thin face like a golden wreath, her eyes seems so huge and so blue, almost turquoise in the weak glow of fluorescent bulbs. Her lips are trembling. She's curled in Sakura's arms, and Sakura has been closer to Ino than she ever, ever thought she would be, but not naked. It's stupid that it makes a difference, she thinks, and Ino is terribly smart, but she's always been an incredibly bad judge of her own beauty despite her flagrant confidence, and Sakura is thinking – she's thinking about –

She doesn't know what to think.

She hasn't for a while now, she supposes.

"Hey," Ino mutters. The corner of her mouth pulls up in the first smile Sakura's seen her wear in four days. "Can I tell you something stupid?"

Sakura nods. The water drips from her hair onto Ino's face, but she doesn't seem to notice.

"Do you remember when we were nine-years-old, that time you slept over at my house after that stupid field trip? How I kicked you in my sleep?"

"You told me you had a nightmare," Sakura fills in the rest. "I remember."

Ino's smile grows minutely. "I lied."

"Why…?"

"You were saying Sasuke's name in your sleep."

Sakura's brow furrows. That's hardly unusual for that time period. They'd started squabbling even before she'd ended their friendship. So, what, then? Jealousy? Annoyance?

"I don't understand."

Ino bites her tongue, but her smile widens despite her effort, and then she laughs. "Me neither."

Sakura's heart flutters hopefully at the sound of her unabashed laughter. It sounds normal. It sounds like Ino, before the drugs, before this whole fucking mission blew up in their faces, and for a moment, Sakura wonders if maybe four days has been enough time to recover. Maybe they'll go back to normal. Maybe they'll be okay.

The hope bursts into flames when Ino's giggling morphs into the sound of struggling inhalations. She's choking. Her tongue seems to get caught in her throat, like it's too big for her mouth, and her body convulses violently at the start of more seizures.

"Ino! Damnit," Sakura hisses. She relaxes her grip on Ino's limbs and cushions her head to keep her from slamming it into the tub.

It's shorter than the last one. Is that a good sign? Sakura doesn't know. She doesn't let herself hope.

 _Fuck this,_ she thinks vehemently as she waits for Ino to return to consciousness in her arms. _Fuck this mission, fuck the Rapture – just – fuck it! We're going home._

When Ino comes to, she takes a deep, shaking breath, and pulls her arms in. Her hands fist in the soaking fabric at Sakura's neck as Ino buries her head into her shoulder, her muscles quivering like gelatin. The trembling of her fingers is strong enough to feel despite her white-knuckled grasp. Her teeth are chattering, lilting her voice into an odd staccato.

"S-S-S-Sakura." Ino's tone makes the woman holding her tense. Sakura's breath hitches, caught in her lungs like fabric on thorns. Ino has never begged anyone for anything, but the desperation is a pitchy whine, clear as the ring of a church bell, quiet as a prayer.

"Don't let me die," she whispers, and this time, Sakura does cry.

She wants to say that she's sorry. It's not rightly her fault, but somehow, it _feels_ that way. Sakura sniffles like a child and wishes the situation was reversed, that Ino had been comforting her instead, because at least that would have been familiar. The hands clutched at her collar loosen to wrap around her body, and Sakura pulls her closer, sobbing and feeling like an idiot for it, because she's not the one dying, after all.

They stay like that for a long time. Sakura forgets to keep track. They've gotten used to the water now, warmed up to room temperature – the warmest it gets in this supposed hotel – and in comparison, Ino's naked skin is hot even through her soaked clothes, almost feverishly so. The only sound is the humming lights overhead, the spray of the shower against the ceramic, and her own shallow, hiccupping breaths, until she feels Ino press their cheeks together. Her lips are right by Sakura's ear.

"I'm so sorry," she mutters, the words slurred as if her jaw is halfway slack, which Sakura suspects it may very well be. "I can't do this anymore."

"It's okay, Ino. It's not your fault. It's – we'll go home, and I'll talk to Tsunade-sama, so don't –"

"Please forgive me."

For what? Sakura wants to ask, but then it hits her all at once, and she realizes what's happening just as Ino's arms flex around her, tightening the hold.

The dozen patches in a plastic bag, sewn between the layers of fabric at the back of her shirt. The result of Ino's hard work, the ones Sakura had at last taken and hidden so carefully. Not carefully enough. By the time Sakura's ripped the other girl from her body, the first one is already stuck to the inside of Ino's wrist – _too late_ – and had Ino planned this? Had she pissed herself on purpose to get them into this position?

There's no time to think about that. Sakura lunges just as Ino frees another from the plastic, and there's a moment where the world seems to contort around her as Ino flails, smacking her upside the head, and Sakura jams her palm into Ino's shoulder to the detriment of her deteriorating body. She screams as if being disemboweled – _I'm sorry,_ Sakura thinks frantically, panicking, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_. Ino, now dazed with pain, stops struggling, and in her near hysterical urgency, Sakura yanks the patch from Ino's fingers and into her palm.

No, she realizes. Stupid. She's a God damn idiot. Dumb, stupid, dumb –

Not _in_ to her palm, _on_ to her palm.

Sakura blinks at her hand is if the anomaly on it might disappear. A small square patch, white, texture of a bandage, coated in a potent drug that she cannot detoxify. Incredibly addictive, she thinks numbly, absorbed instantly through the skin. Stuck there by moisture-activated adhesive.

"Shit," she mutters. Ino's grinning at her from the other side of the tub. She's so nude. So beautiful, soaked like that. Her skin is smooth and slick and just – so damn warm, where their legs are touching. She looks like a goddess.

 _Shit,_ Sakura thinks again, but she's smiling and the thought seems very far away.

The Rapture takes her in an instant.

* * *

 _#_

 _Feedback?_

 _:)_


	2. Day 8

**Day 8:**

Ino is rambling about colors and oceans again. It's a conversation that she starts and restarts halfway through, like she's forgotten that she began it in the first place. There's an ocean, she insists, above their heads, something bigger than any individual person, a beautiful tide of human emotion, suspended in time and space…

She's sitting against the wall, in and out of lucidity, her legs kicked out in front of her, arms limp at her sides. At some point, she stops talking about spheres and tides and the color blue.

"Hey," she breathes. "Hey, Forehead…"

"Yes?"

"You should try this sometime."

Sakura snorts skeptically. "No, thanks. I've seen enough to know better than that already."

"Whatever you say…"

Sakura returns to her task once she's positive that Ino is finished. She's not sure why she bothers to take notes on her behavior anymore, since it's been fairly consistent since the first day, but she's always been prudent about scientific study. It's a hard-earned habit that she's not in a hurry to break.

 _Euphoria_ , she checks the list. _Expanded awareness, heightened empathy…_

She already knows all that though. The various drug tests scattered around her as she sits cross-legged on the floor are of more interest, but even those tell her very little. With two exceptions, most of the substances are inert. There's some opiate residue on the underside of the patch, along with the remnants of a tranquilizer often used to sedate hospital patients, both of which are in Ino's blood, but neither of those cause half of the dozen effects she's catalogued. Not to mention, the amount she finds doesn't account for the potency.

"I'm going to do a chakra scan," she announces, hauling herself from the floor.

Ino sighs dramatically. "Another one?"

"Pig. It's been since yesterday, you know."

"…Really?" Her eyes follow Sakura's approaching form. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

Ino relents. She slides sideways until she's on the grungy floorboards, face up, to allow Sakura access to her body, but just before the hands reach her torso, she blurts,

"Wait. Wait. Just give me a second."

Her voice is shaking slightly. Sakura freezes with her arms outstretched and does as she's told.

It's a symptom of the drug, she knows, but it's still somehow incredibly embarrassing, if the redness of her cheeks isn't telling enough. She's not sure if it's better or worse for the fact that it's Ino. If it'd been a stranger, maybe she could've at least pretended to be nonchalant about the whole thing, but Ino knows her too well for that. Not that they talk about it. That would be far too awkward.

Besides, at the end of the day, neither has a choice in the matter. They'll endure the minor pains and embarrassments as they arise.

There are many, though. Ino's jaw is perceptibly flexing with her self-restraint. Her eyes are glued to Sakura's hands, an inch from the bare skin of her midriff, like there's a million dollars there that she could just _grab_ , if only she were quick enough. Her mind is completely caught up in maintaining control over the situation, and Sakura is sure that Ino will succeed even though it must be incredibly difficult, judging from the look on her face, but part of her envies Ino for the distraction. At least _she_ doesn't have to think about what, exactly, is happening right now.

The seconds tick by with painful slowness. Sakura waits without a word. The first day, Ino struggled through it with witty banter and insults. Sakura hardly noticed. The next few days went similarly. The fifth day, Ino told her to hold on, and Sakura hadn't, thinking she'd merely hit another weird jump in the train tracks of her thoughts, and then. Well.

That noise she'd made… Ino _had_ warned her, Sakura supposes.

"Okay," Ino says simply, voice empty of intonation. Her face is carefully blank.

Sakura lightly presses her hands to Ino's stomach and pretends not to notice the immediate flex of her abs. The scan takes thirty minutes.

Ino's chakra is utterly haywire. It flails inside her body like it has a life of its own, seemingly unconnected to its normal pathways, and Sakura spends the first fifteen minutes of her examination trying to sort through the chaos as she had the first seven days. The next fifteen minutes is simply how long it takes her to admit to herself that she still has no idea what the hell is going on. _What chemical could possibly…?_

It doesn't make a lick of sense. She hasn't made any progress at all in the last week, and she can only hope that Tsunade has received her message by now and has more ideas than she does. Which is to say, more than zero.

Frowning, Sakura withdraws her hands, only to fall on her ass when Ino's own hand reaches out to grab her wrist and narrowly misses.

"Pig! What the hell?"

Ino blinks twice in slow motion, and then her arm drops from where it'd been suspended in the air.

"Sorry," she mutters. She sits up and goes to her travel bag in search of a change of clothes, though she's repeatedly distracted by the textures of the fabrics. Sakura watches amusedly as her friend fondles the soft cotton of a tank top.

If Ino were in her right mind, Sakura would probably make fun of her for it – all of it, really. She'd probably be teasing and gloating in their usual way, citing her irresistible charms with all the false bravado she picked up from Ino over the years, but as it stands, Ino is not in her right mind. It would hardly be fair. (She'll make fun of her for it later though.)

Ino finds a suitable outfit at last. She unabashedly strips off her old one until she's completely nude – _lowered inhibitions_ , Sakura remembers – and yanks on the clean clothes.

"What are you doing?"

"Time to go."

Sakura frowns. "This early? The last dose hasn't even worn off."

"It will soon. I can already feel it."

"Are you sure? What if –"

Ino rolls her eyes. "You're such a mom, Sakura. Really. I'll be fine."

"Then is there a reason you're in such a hurry?" Sakura ventures, watching as Ino tugs on her shoes with one hand already on the doorknob.

"What? I thought I was supposed to be the one with memory issues. I just told you I have to go, not that I _want_ to."

"Yeah, but…" Sakura trails off, and when Ino makes eye contact with her, eyebrow raised, she grins. "Don't tell me you've found a hot drug lord or something?"

"Several, actually."

"God. This really is the perfect mission for you, isn't it?" Sakura laughs. "Just a constant party with loads of vulnerable men for you to pick from. Lucky you."

"Do I detect a hint of jealousy?"

Sakura snorts skeptically. "As if you're worth being jealous over, Pig."

"Don't you mean –"

She stops. They stare at each other. It takes a minute for Sakura to realize that she'd misinterpreted the statement, but by then, Ino is grinning wickedly at her.

"Oh ho ho," she mock laughs. "What's this? Aren't I supposed to be the one with the free spirit?"

"That – that's not what I meant," Sakura flushes, irritated at the misinterpretation. "You –"

"The warped sense of reality? The intensified emotions?"

"You – I – I misspoke!"

"Uh-uh," Ino tuts. "Don't tell me that all this close contact's got you _confused_ , Forehead."

Sakura sputters for a minute before finding the words to reply. "It's – I – damnit! You're the one that's dry humping the mattress and moaning like a porn star –"

"What the hell do you expect me to do when my body basically turns into one giant penis?"

Sakura makes a face at the imagery.

"Oh? So now you find penises gross, do you?"

"You wish," she fires back instantly.

Ino's tone is clearly disbelieving. "Mhm. Sure. Whatever you say, Sakura- _chan_ …"

She's halfway out the door when Sakura stops her. The frustration mounting in Ino's chest is probably unreasonable, she decides, although there _is_ someone waiting for her. He's not one to accept the "fashionably late" excuse, either.

Sakura's apprehensive voice reminds her to be patient. "Ino?"

"Hm?"

"I know it's cheesy," she mutters, lowering her eyes to the floor and fiddling with an empty vial. "But I'm proud of you for – you know – being so strong about all this."

"Did you expect anything less?"

"No," she says instantly, head snapping up in alarm. "Of course not. But, when Tsunade-sama described the Rapture to me, she made it sound like the addiction is instant, and – you're doing really well, and," Ino's snarky smile is growing by the second, and Sakura snaps, flustered, "I'm just trying to give you a compliment here!"

Ino tries to school her expression into something less patronizing. It is funny, though.

"Don't underestimate me, Forehead," her smirk is challenging and comfortingly familiar. "I've got it under control, and everything will be fine. I think you've just spent too much time mother-henning Naruto."

"Maybe you're right," Sakura laughs sheepishly.

Satisfied, Ino turns to leave, her hand once again on the doorknob when Sakura stops her for a second time. Ino bites the inside of her cheek. Deep breaths. It's not that urgent, she reminds herself, even if it is a _little_ urgent, and besides, she can hardly blame Sakura for wanting to talk to her. While Ino is out investigating and actively progressing the mission, Sakura is stuck here all day in this empty room with nothing but a few books. Her company is probably sorely missed, even if Sakura is too self-conscious to admit that weakness explicitly.

"I meant to ask you," Sakura continues, bouncing her leg and looking ten-years-old again. Some things don't change, Ino notes amusedly. "How's it going with Satoshi?"

"Good," she shrugs. "He's approached me every time so far. I think I'm becoming his favorite plaything."

Despite the nonchalance, Sakura grimaces. She can only guess what that means. "Any chance you'll be able to bring back an unused patch soon?"

"Not likely. Maybe in a few more days, but I can't exactly ask him outright."

"I know, I know, I just…"

Ino sighs theatrically and pushes herself off the doorframe. She bends down, poking Sakura in the forehead.

"You," she says firmly, "just worry about using _this_ ," she jabs it again. "And I'll worry about _this_ ," she gestures at her body, cocky smile in place. "You're better off sticking to your strengths, after all."

Sakura's eyes narrow. "I can't tell if you're calling me ugly or not…"

"I'm just saying that your brain is your best asset."

"The way you said it makes it sound like it's my _only_ asset."

"Exactly. It's the same thing."

"But – wait a – hey!" Sakura jumps to her feet. "Get your ass back here, Pig!"

But Ino's already slipped out the door, snickering to herself as she descends the stairs.

#

The city of Fukidate is utterly dismal at all times of the year. In the disgusting July humidity, it's even worse. The streets are wet from the morning rain and smell vaguely of sewage and salinity. Meandering late night wanderers cluster just outside the periphery of street lamps, their heads down and shoulders hunched. It's not a nice neighborhood. Here, eye contact only invites hostility, so Ino follows their lead. She keeps her mouth set in a neutral line and her eyes on the sidewalk a few feet ahead of her, though her senses are primed to interpret oncoming danger.

Not that she isn't purposely walking straight into the biggest danger of all anyway, but still. Getting mugged sounds like a bad time.

She struggles between making it to the party faster and risk sweating, or walking slowly to avoid having her jeans rub uncomfortably against her body. She's going to be early at this rate, but there's a sense of importance that she can't quite combat. It would hardly be a good idea to keep Satoshi waiting.

The party is open to anyone interested, and she suspects the fact that he's invited her specifically can only mean he's requesting her presence _personally_. Progress is being made. It's a good thing. Ino the _person_ might be cringing a little bit in expectation of what she may or may not have to do to stay in the sleazy guy's favor, but Ino the _kunoichi_ is quite pleased with how quickly she's climbed the social ladder into the spotlight of Satoshi's wandering attention. There are plenty of women to pick from, after all, but he'd chosen Ino.

Not that she's not the obvious choice, she thinks, perhaps a bit arrogantly. Quality over quantity and all that.

The party takes place in a glorified drug den, an abandoned three-story warehouse where the only lighting comes from single bulbs strung up from the ceiling, wires exposed. The walls are bare wood, scarred and weathered. All of the dealer's efforts have evidently been spent on the sound system. Music vibrates all three floors. It's not like the people are here for the décor, anyway, Ino thinks wryly. Not a single person inside is sober, but rather patched-up by the dealers at the door before they're even allowed to enter.

It takes her only a minute to adjust to the volume. A fresh patch adorns her arm, and already, she can feel herself rising. The turning of the world feels like a slow song. The bumping, grinding bodies slide against her as she makes her way through the crowd, and the room is already full to bursting. The skin of the other revelers against her own is like a hand on her thigh after a long night of pent up sexual frustration. It's no wonder the party never really stops here.

Ino is no pushover, though, not in self-control or anything else. Pleasure is what it is: it feels good, but it's not worth basing her life around.

Even if it does feel really, really good.

At least half of the people here are completely nude, and others are coupled against the wall in conjoined, writhing masses, lost to the Rapture and the music and the party. She stops to observe one pair pressed into a corner. The look on their faces. Her skin tingles, and she wonders at the heady sensation making her body twitch and her muscles tense uncomfortably – _go on,_ part of her mind whispers suggestively – but only briefly, and then she's navigating the crowd again.

Satoshi finds her first. He comes up behind her and wraps his arm around her middle. The feel of his hands against her skin makes her blood rush to the surface, which is good news for him. Her ninja reflexes demand that she throw him over her shoulder and kick the shit out of him, but they're slowed, dumbed down to the point of being muted almost completely, so when he presses his pelvis against her, she doesn't complain.

She knows it's him because of his cologne, which smells like herbs and conjures images in her drug-addled brain of having urgent, passionate sex in the woods, which sounds quite nice right about now, and she also knows he wants her to dance. She does. Her ass is pushed hard against him – she can feel the erection through his jeans and it feels like she's a meadow and he's a deer stepping lightly across the soft earth, like opening her arms to him would spark the world into movement again, like –

Damn drugs.

With great – _fake, not real, not real –_ reluctance, she separates herself from him when the song ends and turns around with her best flirtatious smile. He's grinning, and she wonders if the short hairs of his goatee will feel like sand on a beach, but she doesn't touch it. When he reaches for her to pull her back, to grind their bodies together like flint and stone, she steps coyly away.

He gets the message. His hand goes for her arm instead, fingering the used patch before pulling it off.

"You seem to have a high tolerance," he whispers in her ear.

She's not sure if it's a compliment. The feel of his breath, the hands on her hips as he leans forward, is perhaps the most arousing sensation she's ever felt in her life.

But, again, Ino's no slouch. The part of her mind she's hidden away, reserved for moments like these, she calls upon now. It reminds her that Satoshi is a drug dealer. It tells her that she needs information. She wants something from him, and despite what her body is demanding, it's not his cock.

She leans her face against his. "I just find that pleasure is better," she whispers in his ear, "when it lasts longer."

Satoshi pauses with his hands halfway up her ribcage and laughs.

"That won't be a problem."

"Maybe we'll see," Ino replies flippantly, smirking at him. She takes another step back and makes her way towards the stairs. His eyes follow her the whole way.

When she gets to the top floor, Ino allows herself a moment to take a deep, steadying breath. She won't have sex with him if she doesn't have to, and besides, not doing so gives her a great amount of leverage. He's obviously intent on getting her in bed. If she plays her cards right, maybe she can get the information she needs – and the drugs – before having to stoop to that level.

Right. That's the plan, she reminds herself resolutely. Despite what she might be feeling now – her skin sensitized nearly to the point of pain, her brain demanding she fix it – she knows that no _real_ part of her wants to sleep with this man.

It's just really fucking hard to remember that.

But she will.

 _It'll be fine._

* * *

 _Feedback? :)_


	3. Day 4

**Day 4:**

Ino is so, so high right now. The most high. Superlative high.

Sakura knows this because Ino's been rolling around on the mattress basically making sweet love to their tarp for the past five minutes.

"Hey, Pig."

Ino merely tangles herself further.

"Pig."

It's just so _crinkly_ …

"Ino!"

At the sound of her name, the aforementioned girl stops molesting their makeshift bedspread and sits up abruptly. "What?"

"You were in the middle of asking me something," Sakura reminds her amusedly. "Something about a bar?"

"I was?"

"Yes. You were."

It takes her a second, and then she jumps to her feet only to nearly fall back down. After spending a moment putting the world back in the proper directions, she approaches Sakura and plops down in front of her. Closer is better, after all.

"Oh, yeah. Do you remember that party I threw when we got promoted to chunin?"

"How could I forget?" Sakura asks wryly. "That was the first night Neji decided to try taking shots and wound up vomiting in Tenten's drink."

Ino grins at the memory. "Oh, yeah. That guy shouldn't drink. In fact, that whole team shouldn't drink."

"Tenten seemed alright…"

"…Until she started using people's beer bottles as target practice," Ino finishes, laughing.

"Still, she hit every one. It's pretty impressive."

"Poor Hinata, though…"

Oh, yeah. Sakura had almost forgotten about that. The one drink she'd been nursing all night was still full when it exploded in her hand after Tenten threw some kind of ball-and-chain thing at it, completely soaking her shirt. So many stares…

Ino seems to be recalling the same imagery. Slowly, however. She blinks once at half-speed, a lazy, amused smile growing at the thought. "That girl has some boobs on her, I tell you what."

"You think they're bigger than yours?"

"Probably. I mean, she goes out of her way to play them down and they're still massive, so I'm sure if she actually showed them off…"

"They'd be huge."

"Oh yeah."

Both women's eyes drift down to their own chests thoughtfully. Sakura sighs.

"Don't worry," Ino consoles her. "I'm sure you'll hit puberty some day."

"…Damnit, Pig..."

"I'm kidding! Besides, you don't need big boobs to be hot, you know."

"Yeah. You just have to be hot." Her tone is clearly self-derogatory, and Ino can't help but roll her eyes. She probably shouldn't have, though. The world smears into a blend of beautiful colors like her vision is an eraser, dragging through the universe and distorting it by the failures of perception, belittling the inherent wonder of a life so filled with bountiful gifts, and yet unable to be fully appreciated in the tragically limited scope of human senses…

Ino blinks. Breathes. Where was she…?

"Oh, come on, Sakura. You've got plenty of things that make you attractive."

"Yeah, I'm sure big foreheads are all the rage in Suna…"

"Foreheads are the new boobs…" Ino trails off, associations and memories tangling in her brain like a skipping stone. "You should make that a TV show."

That's absurd. Enough so to actually make Sakura laugh. "And what the hell would it be about?"

"…Women…!" Ino declares after a lengthy pause. "Women with – with big foreheads, taking what's theirs, fighting for love against the – the, uh – the archetypical stereotypes of beauty! They'd battle big-breasted women and change the minds of shallow men everywhere through long, meaningful monologues about the intrinsic beauty of asymmetrical faces and the importance of polishing one's forehead to maintain a shiny, wrinkle-free appearance –"

Sakura is clutching her stomach at this point.

" – and the heroine would ironically fall in love with a man with a tiny, tiny forehead, and she'd tell him, 'size isn't everything, you know,' and they'd –"

"Alright!" She's laughing so hard it hurts. "Okay, okay, God… how do you come up with this?"

Ino taps her temple. "Drugs."

The melting of the parts of her brain usually reigning in her imagination and inhibitions is certainly helpful. _Is that why so many artists are addicts…?_

"Good – good point…" Once she's regained control of her body again, Sakura remembers that this all started somewhere. "Weren't you asking me something?"

"I was – oh! Oh, right, the party. Well, do you remember that one guy that came back with us to my place?"

"Kiba's friend? The one with the scar on his chin?"

"I think so..."

"Wound up playing strip poker?"

"Yeah! That's the one."

"I remember him. Why?"

"Apparently Kiba has no idea who that was."

Sakura frowns, confused. "What? You mean he was a total stranger?"

Ino shrugs. "Yep."

"Nobody brought him?"

"Nope."

"Wow."

"I know," Ino nods sagely. Then, after a moment, she adds, "He had a really small penis."

Sakura blushes, mostly from second-hand embarrassment. "Yeah," she laughs. "He did."


	4. Day 26

**Day 26:**

Reality is bordered by feathered edges. Ino is trying her damndest to make them solid again.

She thinks it's not working.

 _Contextualize it_ , she reminds herself. _What would you have thought about this a week ago? Two weeks ago? Yesterday?_

It's a meditative exercise. The idea is to ground herself in sober thoughts, to remember what the Ino of a more sound state of mind would've done and believed, but the problem is that Ino has been high for twenty-six days and her sober self was a long, long time ago. She hadn't expected to be here for this long. The memories blink into and out of existence like a heat mirage. Are they all real? Or, a scarier thought – are they all _fake_? Besides, Ino is a logical, hard-headed person to her best self-imagining. So, doesn't that mean that she would have always made the same choices?

Satoshi is teasing her. He met her at the door and guided her past the bouncers. No patch-up. It's been fourteen hours since she last experienced the Rapture. Her arms are bare and her blood is empty and her head is, too, all but for the thought that this is not how this is supposed to go. She's on a mission – it's her responsibility to do this, to take the drugs, to bring them home, and to figure out what is going on. She's in Satoshi's good graces. She knows now that their operation is a vigilante effort of some kind – he tried to impress her with his sense of justice, with his peaceful ideals and his hatred of ninja politics. The motivations are somewhat clear, it's just the method that needs deciphering now, and the method is drugs.

Ino has to figure it out. She has to take the _fucking_ drugs.

"None of the other women get such treatment," she points out, her hand on his thigh and her voice pitched in a coy feminine whine. "What makes me so special?"

Internally, she's pissed. He's holding drugs over her head, drugs she _needs_ – for the mission, to do her God damn _job_ – in exchange for her time. Or perhaps "services" is the right word. Both, really.

"What can I say? You're a step above." Satoshi is a terrible flirt. Witty half the time and proverbially falling on his face the other. Before, she still might've tucked away that flattery to privately enjoy, to add it to the cushion of her self confidence, but now, it just stings. Now, she wants to be like everyone else here, the other shinobi swaying and dancing to the music, lost in the Rapture, in the rhythm of bodies and the melody of conjoined hearts. They are one here. All of them.

All of them but Ino. She's gnashing her teeth and has to remind herself that's hardly attractive, but it's hard not to be frustrated, barred from her mission like this, from progress, from the sea of togetherness lapping at a shore just out of reach while she's nothing but a tide pool, isolated and left behind in the changing ocean depths. She can sense it. There's something powerful here, as if the answer to the universe is being held over her head somewhere above her, if only she could figure it out. If only she could get there.

She _could_ …

After all, Ino thinks, her eyes darting to the jubilant revelers around her, part of her mission is to bring home unused drugs, and thus far, the bouncers and dealers refuse to give out patches they aren't sticking on to people themselves. She'd seen a fight break out over it at the door at least once a night. Not to mention, she has to take the drugs.

She has to take the drugs.

She has to –

 _I need_ –

Deep breath. Deep, deep breath. _Get a hold of yourself_. Take the drugs to build confidence, to build trust and get closer to the truth and trick Satoshi into thinking he's the one holding the cards, but the point is that he _isn't._ Ino doesn't _need_ the drugs, for fuck's sake – except that she does. For the mission.

Does it really make a difference, then? Doesn't that mean that, in reality, Satoshi has something she needs, and she has something Satoshi wants, and so.

And so. Tit for tat. Service for patronage. It's her responsibility.

Ino slides into his lap and wraps her arms around his shoulders, and it's nothing at all like the deeply pleasurable connections of the Rapture, but she can fake it for now.

"Tell you what," she purrs into his ear, pressing her body to his, her crotch grinding against his growing erection in time with the music. His hands come up to grab her waist, and she knows she has him now by the ferocity of his grip. He exhales slowly in an attempt to steady himself, but she's not about to let that work. Ino slides her hands up his chest, neck, to his face, back down again before wrapping her fingers through the belt loops of his jeans. "I'll give you what you want, but you have to do something for me, first."

"And what's that?" He breathes.

"I want extra."

The hands trailing up her sides stop. He tenses minutely, but she pretends not to notice, continuing her impromptu lap dance. When he speaks, his voice is carefully neutral, but she isn't worried about his poorly disguised suspicion.

"You're not planning to sell, are you?"

Ino laughs, a low, sultry sound. "No, nothing like that. I'm only interested in having a good time, Satoshi-kun…"

"Don't tell me this isn't enough for you?" He fires back. His hands are moving again and his hips are thrusting in a facsimile of sex, and she knows he's already decided to say yes. She only has to push a little more.

She leans in. Her tongue slides over the shell of his ear before she speaks, and he can't quite hide his shudder. It's almost too easy. She can only imagine what he'd be like if he used.

"Don't you remember?" She murmurs. "High tolerance, and all…"

It takes him a second, but then he remembers the conversation and grins.

"You've got a deal."

He slips her two. The first one she slyly pockets to hide from prying eyes – not that anyone here likely has the brain power to notice at the moment – and the second, she brings to her lips, holding eye contact as she slides her tongue over it with half lidded eyes before sticking it to her arm.

That seems to do the trick. He picks her up, his hands under her ass and her legs wrapped around his waist. The pulse of his blood is an emotion she can feel. The Rapture takes only a few seconds to begin its magic, and then Ino is back there again, in that ocean with everyone else, and Satoshi's hands and mouth are little flames along her skin. It feels so good it almost hurts, like that mind melting, urgent pleasure just before an orgasm.

He brings her to a couch shoved against the wall on the third level. A few people are sprawled along the floor, too high to move. Others smile at the ceiling or crouch against walls, rocking back and forth, caught up in the euphoria. Still others are doing exactly what she and Satoshi are about to, and some of the dancers are close enough that she could reach out and touch them, but Ino hardly cares at the moment. Public sex or not, a drug den is hardly a place to be concerned for modesty.

 _Tit for tat, my ass,_ Ino thinks as Satoshi yanks down her pants and kisses the inside of her thigh. She's definitely getting the better deal here. If it feels this good already – hell, if Sakura's clinical hands on her are enough to make her heart squeeze with an emotion so fierce that her eyes water – then, full blown sex?

Hell yeah.

When his mouth finds its goal, Ino takes a shuddering breath in her surprise. It quickly morphs into a scream. How could anything feel that damn good? Her cries are lost to the music and the sounds of the party, and she's rising higher and higher to come crashing down like a powerful wave on the shore, hands fisted in his short hair. Every touch stokes the fire between her legs. Her skin is so sensitive it seems she can feel every atom vibrate at his touch.

It's amazing.

It's also entirely tactile.

 _The thing_ , she thinks, the thought vaporous and unstable in her addled mind. _Where is - I don't –_

What is she doing wrong? No, that's not it, is it? It's not _wrong_ , something is just _missing,_ because it's different. Her body feels like one huge tangle of nerves, just like it does when Sakura performs those troublesome chakra scans, but it's more than that, too, and Ino realizes that her initial suspicions were correct. It's the emotional aspect – the intimacy of their friendship – that makes the contact feel like the first warm day after a long winter, like things are right, and good, and the pleasure is part of her, not just happening _to_ her.

Satoshi is giving her an experience. Sakura, accidentally or not, is bringing to life something that is already there, something that won't leave her when it's over.

It's not real though. _The drugs_ , her mind protests, but only weakly. It's too hard to think about that right now.

It's too hard to think about that _ever_ , but it's difficult to remember that there will come a day when she won't feel that way, when the drugs have finally been flushed from her system and Sakura will just be Sakura again, and Ino won't feel any which way about it except for the affection she's always had for her best friend.

The thought is saddening. It shouldn't be though, right? She hadn't been sad about it before. They'd been perfectly content in their friendship, so why should she be sad about it later? You can't lose something that's never existed.

She just has to wait it out. Wait until the mission is over and things are back to normal, and avoid Sakura as much as she can until then, because the more she thinks about this the more lost she becomes.

In the meantime, Satoshi is a pretty damn good substitute.

#

This room is so. Damn. Empty.

Sakura has gone through her bag at least ten times in search of any way to alleviate her boredom. She's sifted through her reports, catalogues of symptoms, medical journals, drug tests and the letters from Tsunade several times. She's read the books she brought with her, cover to cover, and then backwards just for the hell of it. She's completely out of distractions.

She pretends not to be worried as she paces their dingy "hotel" room, which is not really a hotel, but rather a shack located a mile from the nearest drug den. The floorboards are rotting and it smells faintly of mold, though it's at least well ventilated, considering all the cracks in the siding and the fact that the window won't completely close. A single threadbare mattress is shoved into the corner. It's covered in mysterious stains that she prefers not to think about, a gross accumulation of bodily fluids, and the first thing she'd done upon arriving over three weeks ago was cover it with the tarp in her backpack. The crinkling makes it difficult to sleep, but not as difficult as getting over the thought of what may or may not have happened on that mattress.

It's dank and her clothes are sticking to her skin in the August heat. There is no air conditioner, of course. She pulls at her shirt irately. The small bathroom consists of a grungy toilet and a shower-tub combination that, when used, probably gets her more dirty than clean. The sink faucet drips with an infuriating lack of rhythm. Really, isn't it the monotony of the sound that usually drives people crazy? But, no. This room is so old and abused that even the water droplets are off time.

In the few hours since Ino left, Sakura has literally worn a groove into the deteriorating floorboards. She doesn't plan on mentioning it, though. If Ino knows exactly how distressing she finds this situation, she'd be pissed. She'd probably go on another rant about how she's perfectly capable, thank you very much, and how Sakura's worry is totally unjustified, as if they aren't on a mission to drug Ino up repeatedly until Sakura can untangle the mass of chemicals slowly killing her. It's like diffusing a time bomb. Only messier.

It's not that Sakura doesn't trust her skills. Poisons and analytical toxicology are two of her specialties, but this isn't like her other cases for a few reasons. The first is the obvious fact that she's not working via petri dish or lab rat, but rather, a live human. Her best friend, no less. The second is that she has absolutely nothing to go off of. There are no drugs like the Rapture.

Sakura forces her butt to connect with the plastic covered mattress and puts her head in her hands. _This sucks_.

It started quietly, as bad situations often do. Rumors, mostly. Something about a new substance, a recreational party drug that both she and Tsunade dismissed as some variation of a pre-existing one. They figured it was a combination of prescription pills and herbs that make people "feel good," as most drugs are intended to do. Their fellow shinobi whispered about it to each other, but it's not like that isn't to be expected. Ninja have hard lives. It's no secret that many of them cope with constant mortal danger, shortened life spans, PTSD, violence, and other recurring, stressful situations with alcohol and drugs. Tsunade and her sake. Shikamaru and his cigarettes. _Naruto and his ramen_ , she thinks wryly.

It's one of those unspoken things, a silent agreement of non-judgment. It didn't seem like something worth worrying about.

And then people started disappearing. It's a confused mishmash of facts. The rumors led interested people to a certain place. They went. They came back. They left again. This happened with increasing frequency, and the effects didn't go unnoticed, but rather ignored for the sake of shinobis' unspoken agreement not to ask questions about these things. The side effects manifested in haggard faces, chronic lateness, and other predictable – and mostly benign seeming – results. Then they started happening more. People began leaving for weeks at a time. Eventually, they didn't come back at all.

The situation is entirely frustrating. How can a drug have such powerful effects and leave no chemical traces in the blood? Neither she nor Tsunade had ever seen anything like it. To make matters more annoying, the manufacturers refuse to sell in bulk despite the best efforts of previous reconnaissance. Without a good amount of the substance to work with - or any, in this case - lab study is impossible, but the dealers insist: only one patch at a time, and only to be taken at the party under their watchful eyes. In other words, no narks and spies allowed.

You have to go to the party if you want the drug.

If you want the drug, you have to let the dealer apply it.

If the dealer applies it, you can kiss your chakra control, your mental faculties, and your drug independency goodbye.

It didn't take long for her to figure out the system. A drug provided straight from the source, and only in small doses, prevents smaller dealers from reselling it and inventive addicts from being able to recreate it. They're cutting out the middleman to keep the price incredibly high. You go to the party, you pay an exorbitant amount for a highly addictive drug – a "fun time" – and then you're hooked. You keep seeking it out until you simply stop leaving the parties at all.

The "festivities," meanwhile, are held in the middle of nowhere. Dirty parts of distant cities, far from ninja villages, hence her disgusting accommodations.

Sakura wishes for the umpteenth time that she could simply charge in there and kick the shit out of everyone involved, but this isn't a small time operation. This is more than just a drug. It's more powerful than that. Shinobi are vanishing like – well, like the name implies – and recklessly attacking will only push the masterminds further into hiding. Rather, this is an operation that requires a delicate touch. It requires someone adept in acting and reconnaissance. Someone who's good at getting answers and has the mental fortitude needed to combat the incredible psychological addictiveness.

It requires Ino.

And as the only combat and mission ready medical kunoichi with a specialization in toxicology that isn't the hokage, it requires Sakura, too.

Too bad she isn't living up to her name. Three weeks and basically no progress. Ino's list of physiological responses and symptoms could paper her whole bedroom, and Sakura has yet to figure out what's causing even half of them, let alone the link _between_ them. Is the decreased efficacy of the euphoria inducing substance due to a tolerance, or the normal course of the drug? Is Ino's chakra growing weaker because of a physical imbalance, or a mental one?

She glares into the darkness outside their window and mentally notes the time. It's nearing one in the morning. Ino has been gone for five hours, which is two longer than she said she'd need, and the alarm bells in Sakura's head have been going off for at least that long. Something is wrong, her brain keeps insisting, but she can't exactly wander into a drug den and ask around to see if that's the case or not. Ino wouldn't take kindly to it either. Even if their friendship is decidedly solid again, something is off lately. Ino's been spending less and less time in the room. She's gotten less talkative. No more long chats in the downtime between parties. No more high musings.

Ino is avoiding her, and Sakura is worried and hurt and frankly, lonely, trapped in this room all day, but she shoves it all underneath invented anger and pretends she's taking offense to it, because that's what they do. Even if she's terrified that Ino is losing a battle to an addiction she's obligated to have, and Sakura is therefore losing _her,_ and she's _failing_ – failing her friends _again_ – because of her own incompetence. She should've figured this out by now, she should've found the answers a week ago so they could both go home and chalk up all of the weird things happening between them to drugs and stress.

But they can't because Sakura can't do her God damn job. She pushes her knuckles into her eyes and refuses to cry. Ino will come in soon and she doesn't want to be caught like this, confused and distraught, so she'll rage at her friend as soon as that door opens. She'll insult her if she has to. Competitiveness is a river of kerosene between them, and implications of inferiority are the sparks that ignite it.

At this point, Sakura will do anything to tilt the world back into its usual angle, even if all she wants to do is grab Ino and hide them both under a quilt like they used to do when they told each other secrets, sinking into Ino's mattress, awake far past their bedtimes.

Some things never change, she supposes.

When Ino at last stumbles through the door, Sakura proves herself right. She jumps to her feet and is immediately at Ino's side to exemplify their relationship in a nutshell: caring and concern threaded tightly between insults and petty bickering.

"Ino-pig, what the hell?" She gripes, closely following the half-limp blond to the mattress. "Why did you take so long? You worried the crap out of me, you know! I was ten minutes away from barging in there and –"

Ino shoots her a withering glare that doesn't hold nearly as much hostility as it should. She's tired. The peak of the drugs has passed, and her words don't have nearly the amount of snarky bite to them that she would've liked.

"You're welcome," she says, dropping the unused patch into Sakura's hand.

It's like being handed a winning lottery ticket. Finally, _finally_. Sakura almost jumps for joy. Now, maybe, she can at last unravel this mystery, and they can finally go home. Something has changed between them, and now, each day they spend here feels like they're slowly snowballing towards a cliff, gathering layers upon layers of emotional debris and kicking up dust on the way, but it's not yet bad enough that they can't recover from it, she hopes. She nearly turns away to break out her lab kit and medical bag before remembering her earlier worries. Five hours is a long time.

"You're amazing," she preempts her question, hoping to avoid one of Ino's recently developed mood swings. (Well, she's always had mood swings, but not quite like this.) Unfortunately, Ino catches on instantly.

"What is it, Forehead?"

Sakura sighs. Maybe she shouldn't ask. It might be kinder not to… but she wants to know. She's scared for Ino, but also for _them,_ and she hasn't felt this acutely vulnerable in a long time. The look on Ino's face sends Sakura into internal conniptions of self-consciousness and a peculiarly selfless kind of worry that she hasn't experienced since she was twelve-years-old, beaten black-and-blue from the Forest of Death and trying to convince herself to raise her hand to warn Hayate and Kakashi-sensei of that damn mark – not since Sasuke.

Which is exactly why the need to get the hell out of here.

But Sakura has always been second-in-command to her emotions. Even when they're painful. Even when she isn't sure if they're real.

"How'd you do it?"

"How do you think?" Ino deadpans.

Stupid feelings. Stupid, nonsensical, ridiculous, stress-induced opportunistic totally absurd – _don't ask, Sakura, don't you dare, this is dumb and you know it –_

"You're not falling in love with him, are you?"

Ino looks like she's trying to laugh and sneeze at the same time. "Don't be ridiculous, Sakura! What the hell?"

"Then – then why'd you do it?" Sakura stutters, singling out the thin strand of anger from the ball of raveled emotions in her chest, sparking like stripped wires. "I thought you said you didn't want to? That you were just going to hold it over his head?"

"To get something _back_. Use that forehead of yours. Aren't you happy we finally got something out of all this?"

She's not, though. She's not happy at all anymore. Sakura grits her teeth and goes to fish her medical kit from her travel bag without another word.

"What the hell is your problem?" Ino shouts at her back. The plastic rumples like parodied thunder as she sits up, but Sakura doesn't turn around from where she's laying out supplies on the floor.

"I don't have a problem," she mutters.

"You obviously do. What is going on in that gigantic head of yours?"

Sakura's hand unconsciously goes to touch her forehead. When she realizes what she's doing, it just makes her angrier. She spins around, furious at herself, and at Ino, and at everything in-between them.

"What is _your_ problem? You're the one that's getting angry! It was just a question –"

"A fucking ridiculous question!" Ino counters. "Why would you ask me something like that? Do you think I can't do my fucking job? Because, as far as I know, _I'm_ the one that's making progress, Sakura. _I'm_ the one that's fucking drug dealers and putting my life on the line here while you're sitting on your ass accomplishing nothing!"

Boy, oh boy, does it hurt. It's like Ino just turned her inside out to show her, yet again, how little worth there is on either side.

Has Sakura ever done _anything_ worthwhile for _anyone_? If she has, she suddenly can't remember. Maybe she's as weak as she'd been at twelve-years-old. Maybe she's just gotten better at hiding it.

It's hard to tell, right now.

"You're not high, are you?" Sakura asks, carefully concealing the little shred of hope that maybe she can blame this on something else, but Ino rolls up her sleeve and her arm is bare.

"What's it look like? I've been coming down for an hour already. Maybe that's the problem," she mutters distractedly.

"Since when is being sober a problem?"

Ino doesn't answer. She just grits her teeth and glares. Sakura approaches her, slowly, cautiously, like one might approach a snarling dog.

"Ino, I don't –"

But as soon as Sakura's hand hits her shoulder, Ino flinches like there's a hot iron on her skin, and then she's whirling around Sakura and heads straight for the door.

"Fuck you," she snaps. "I don't need your pity."

Ino slams the door behind her.

What a ridiculous question. That girl is too sensitive for her own good. With her emotions spilled across the floor all the time, can Ino really blame herself for accidentally stepping all over them? How could she not, when Sakura questions her abilities like that?

The guilt is there anyway.

Stupid Sakura and her stupid, gigantic heart, the only part of her body bigger than her forehead, Ino thinks, and her dumb question, dumb, pretty girl, so sad all the time, stupid –

 _I don't need this shit_. Ino hurries her pace. Maybe she shouldn't have left the party in the first place.

#

Back in the room, Sakura is already hard at work. She preps a cell with potassium bromide, prepares the solvent, and carefully cuts the patch into fourths. It shouldn't take more than four tries.

She's Tsunade's apprentice, after all. Second best med-nin in Konoha and one of the best in the world. She's saved lives, created cures for some of the most deadly toxins known to man. She can change a landscape with her fists, has outwitted and beaten S-class shinobi… Sakura has helped to save the world.

Why is it then, when Ino belittles her, she can't remember these things?

Ino is the only person in her life, barring Sasuke, that has ever made her feel so thoroughly inadequate. The only two she would ever _let_ make her feel that way.

Sakura smiles humorlessly. Some things really don't change.


	5. Day 15

**Day 15:**

There's a fine layer of dust coating every one of their belongings. Not for the first time, Sakura wishes they could've stayed somewhere even slightly more comfortable than this, but this "hotel" is closest to the parties, and it's also the least suspicious place for Ino to return to at night. At least their makeshift bed is a reasonable size. Sort of. They both manage to fit on it without touching each other, at least.

"It's like everything is just _more_ ," Ino tries to explain, yet again, the sensation of the Rapture in her blood. It's not easy – the feeling is really beyond description. Just _good_. The best. Dangerously so. "Being connected to everyone around you, and each person is like a _being_ , but I don't mean just a _person,_ and – hey! Quit laughing at me, Forehead!"

Sakura tries and fails to stifle her giggles. "Sorry, Pig, but you sound like… well, like you're high."

"Go figure."

"Sorry," she smiles sheepishly. "Go on."

When she's sure that Sakura's laughter has subsided, Ino continues. "Being at the parties, it's like every single person there is a kindred spirit – and I know that sounds cheesy," she preempts Sakura's impending remark, "but somehow, I _know_ those people, even though I don't, like we're all drops of water in an ocean. Do you know what I mean?"

"Nope."

Sakura has no idea what she means. As far as she knows, she's a human in a human body with a human mind. Whatever Ino is feeling isn't something she's experienced. It sounds nice though, honestly; Sakura has never had such a connection with _anyone_ that wasn't painful and one-sided, let alone a room full of people, which brings her full circle back to what she originally meant when she'd asked Ino to tell her what it's like.

It's embarrassing though. It makes her feel like they're two preteens at a sleepover again, with Ino in her infinite experience and wisdom, and Sakura with all her shy curiosity. She tries to keep the question hidden, but Ino, in her hyper-attuned state, can practically _feel_ the trepidation emanating from the other girl.

"Something wrong?"

"Not – not exactly…"

Ino raises an eyebrow. "So what isn't exactly wrong, then?" She asks teasingly, and Sakura blushes, her fingers curling around the tarp anxiously.

"I just, I was wondering… what about the, uh, the other stuff?"

"Other stuff?"

Sakura's eyes drifts to the mattress, the careful, calculated distance between their bodies. A very necessary one.

In any other moment, Ino might've made fun of her for her naivety, but as it is, the drugs in her system squash any malicious or hostile feelings, even the harmless ones so characteristic of their friendship. She can only find the question endearing.

"You mean the physical things?" Ino asks outright, much to Sakura's increasing bashfulness.

"Well, yeah, I mean… you know, I've never… felt anything like that, so…"

Ino suppresses her smile. "It feels good," she says simply, but Sakura's face falls slightly at the short description.

"That's it? Just good?"

"It feels great. Amazing, actually. But, I mean," she grins, "how explicit do you want me to be here?"

"How – I just want to know the answer, so…"

It's hard to think about anything. Ino's mind keeps drifting into places she doesn't want it to go, and she finds herself in a constant battle to yank it back in place. It's easier here, outside of the party, but only in some ways. In others, it's harder, and she considers sidestepping the question entirely. Girl talk or not, the drugs make this a precarious situation.

It'll be nice to be sober again when the mission is over, she thinks, even though some part of her brain is singing a refrain, _will it? Are you sure?_ Ino clamps down on it as best she can. If Sakura knew, she'd probably try and keep her from going back to Satoshi and the Rapture. Their mission would be blown. So, in the meantime, she's stuck this way for now, drugged up and soaring higher than the hokage monument.

It's not like it's unpleasant or anything; the problem is that it's quite the opposite. Even though Sakura rather adorably finds the physical effects of the Rapture the most intriguing - and not just in the name of science, as she might claim - the truth is that the emotional ones are far more intense. The interconnectedness of all living things. The partyers, joyous and celebratory, happy just to be together, dancing and kissing and laughing. She doesn't miss it when she's here, though, and that's another thing that Sakura probably doesn't need to know about.

"Pig?" Sakura ventures nervously.

Ino isn't sure how to answer yet. The drugs are skewing her perception. The fact of the matter is that, when Sakura touches her during check-ups and chakra scans, her hands are warm and soft and electrifying in a way that not even Satoshi's are – and Ino isn't stupid. Intensity of emotion is an effect of the Rapture, and it's because they know each other that this is happening. Satoshi is a stranger, but she and Sakura have had an emotionally charged relationship right from the time they met. They've forged a place in each other's hearts and struggled, bled and hurt to keep it there. They've worried for each other, cried and fought and feared together, so it makes sense, then, that the drug is exponentially expanding those emotions, that closeness, turning the feelings into something vaster.

If being at the party with strangers feels like being in a room full of people with whom she's incredibly close, than being with Sakura, someone she's _actually_ close with, feels like…

Well. There's a reason they're not touching.

Even now, watching Sakura's curious, anxious face, Ino's heart is slow and steady and _sure_ of the things she's feeling, the sensations like hot sake on a cold day, that overtake her. Like she could lie here and listen to Sakura speak and answer her questions forever, and be happy – forever. But it's drugs. Hormones. Chemicals. It's not real. She knows this because she'd never felt his way before the Rapture, and she wants to laugh at herself for the idiocy of it, only, it's getting harder to do that.

It doesn't seem as absurdly funny as it did when she'd first realized what was happening a little over a week ago. It feels serious, and absolute, and wondrous, like the first time she'd seen snow as a child – but, see, that's a high thought. Not a _real_ one.

But what _is_ "real"? Her brain asks her. If it feels real, then isn't it?

No, wait, does that make sense…?

And more importantly, is there a way to find out? Sakura is watching her with wide, curious eyes, all anxious and vulnerable at having her ignorance exposed, and Ino remembers the days when Sakura would look at her like that all the time, when every question was laced with self-conscious fear and admiration. When Sakura looked up to her and Ino looked _at_ her, even if Sakura never thought they stood on equal ground. Back then, she saw someone whose emotions were too big for her body. A little girl starved for love with her heart wide open, so badly in need of armor that Ino wrapped herself around it like a suit of iron to keep her safe.

She's proud of that now. Not for what she'd done so much as what she'd helped to create. The affection is syrupy sweet, and urgent, and it warms her in a few – drug induced, she reminds herself – ways that she probably shouldn't mention.

Sakura's hardly a little girl anymore.

And she's so damn curious. So inexperienced and naïve. And Ino is a pretty good teacher, you know.

"Drugs," Ino mutters aloud, because her vocal chords work even if her mind is mushy as pudding. "God damn drugs…"

Sakura blinks. "What?"

They're so close. They could be even closer. Their relationship is feather soft and strong as Kiba's favorite liquor, and it hits Ino all at once that she's actually, genuinely never been closer to anyone in her entire life. Her friendship with Sakura is the most meaningful relationship she has, and has ever had.

Is that a real thought? The drugs?

…What's the difference, again?

Ino reaches blindly into her thoughts for the sober part of her brain and finds her grasping fingers filled with nothing but more of the same. Looking into her mind's eye is like looking into a kaleidoscope inside a kaleidoscope inside a kaleidoscope. The drug is peaking. Maybe she should've waited longer for the last dose to wear off before putting on another patch.

"Have you ever touched yourself?"

"I – what?!" Sakura flinches. Her hands come up to her reddened face as if to hide herself. "Why the hell would you ask me that?!"

Ino once again fights back her smile. She doesn't want to make her feel worse, after all. "I'm not going to ask for a demonstration, Sakura. Jeez. I'm just wondering if you have any context whatsoever."

This seems to convince her. Slowly, Sakura lowers her hands, though her face is still the color of a hot pepper.

"Well – yeah, I mean, a few times…"

A bleacher full of miniature Inos has filled Ino's mind, their pink flags waving as they cheer, _touch her! Come on, she'll like it!_

She ignores them.

"It feels like that, only all over your body," Ino says calmly as if there isn't a chorus of voices in her head demanding she get naked and just show her, because actions speak louder than words, after all, and what better way to explain something to someone than to _show_ them? And then she could complete this connection, her body like a lit fuse waiting to be grounded in something solid, as if she and Sakura are cosmic forces… two particles floating in an abyss of vibrating atoms, diaphanous and ethereal but somehow _existing_ in this strange, intergalactic motion of centripetal force, as two people trying to speak over the susurrate whispers of a million voices, just to _hear_ , to feel each other, anything tangible and meaningful in the constant struggle of this Sisyphean task called _life_ – !

High thoughts.

Damn drugs. God. Damn. Drugs.

 _Touch her!_ The Inos scream.

"Oh…" Sakura perceptibly swallows, shifting nervously against the noisy plastic covered mattress.

 _Do it now! Don't you want to feel good?!_

"Uh? Ino? What are you –"

"Hush," Ino demands gently. She scoots forward until they're close, so close, facing each other.

"Pig, I don't think –"

Neither does Ino. She kisses Sakura's forehead and it feels like the first dip into a hot spring after a long workout. Her lips tingle.

So does everywhere else.

The emotions weave seamlessly into the physical sensation, and it's not at all like the throng of bodies at the parties, or Satoshi. It's deeper and wider and bigger than that. Her heart flutters and she sighs, satisfied in a sense that she hadn't known needed satiating, or maybe that it even existed. Ducking her chin down, she nuzzles her face into Sakura's, and the girl freezes at the touch, confused and unsure but still so damn trusting.

The added skin contact expands the emotions from where they'd been coiled and condensed in Ino's stomach like a led ball. Their noses bump together and Ino's lips part, and she can feel Sakura's breath on her face, and whatever is happening in her head is bigger and more important than anything else has ever been. Her chest tightens at the excruciating emotions wrapping around her heart and _squeezing_ , strong enough to make her eyes water and her stomach drop as if someone has stolen the ground out from beneath her.

Sakura just looks confused.

Which means she can't feel it.

Ino pulls away and laughs so hard she snorts.

"Uh…?"

"Just checking something," Ino promises.

It's definitely just the drugs.


	6. Day 34

**Day 34:**

It's like gravel. Grind. Grind. Grinding.

Bodies and teeth.

Ino can't stop. Her jaw is clenched and her teeth are pressed together like she's trying to keep something between them – her sanity, perhaps? – but then her muscles contract and move sideways around the joint like the halves of her mouth are magnets of the same polarity. Sliding. Grinding. Like the bodies.

So many people moving in unified rhythm, raising their hands in praise to some vast ocean of human consciousness above them as the electronic music shrills its climax and the thrum of the bass rattles through her from foot to pelvis to the top of her skull. All the feelings are blue. The ocean is blue. Swirling emotion manifested in a force she can't understand, shared between them all –

So why can't she feel it anymore?

Thirty-four days of being caught in the Rapture and Ino is losing her place in heaven. The first two-and-a-half weeks had been euphoric. Everything touching, skin-to-skin and heart-to-heart, intermingled. Her feelings and thoughts made _sense_ as they escaped her and came back charged and electric. The world held a beauty she'd never seen before. Life and people existed in a way that defied any explanation or definition she'd ever come to know as the truth.

Her heart opened to it in response, was flooded with so much ecstasy she could hardly contain it – couldn't, in fact, as it came flush up to her skin from the inside and told her to wrap her hands around that interconnectedness and never let go. To make herself conjoined in the seas of that shared humanity would be to know herself, the world. _Happiness._

She hadn't, though. She'd resisted. Was that her mistake?

Ino of just two weeks ago would've told her that her mistake was ever taking the drugs in the first place. Ino of right now, Ino who is trying desperately to reach that climax of human existence once again, knows no such boundaries. She'd held the world in her palm and let it slip through her fingers – how could she just _forget_ that, now?

That's what Sakura doesn't seem to understand. She's never known what it's like to be _complete._ Her mind is unfinished, wanting, just like Ino's is now, only Sakura doesn't know that she's missing anything at all. If she did, she'd be here, too. She'd be clawing, and fighting, and _reaching_ for the missing aspects of herself, for that dazzling pinnacle of emotion so far above the ground where her feet are planted.

That's the problem between the two of them, Ino thinks as she pushes her way through the bodies, her eyes darting between faces, searching. That's the issue. Every time she goes back to their room since the day they fought – four days ago? Ten? Sakura's angry expression blurs in her memory like someone has dragged a dirty eraser through it – they fight again. Ino doesn't _need_ that, damnit. She's struggling as it is. That negativity is merely drawing her back to the earth, keeping her from where she needsto be: so much higher than that.

The dopamine receptors in her brain are fried like seared meat. She doesn't know that, though.

In fact, all Ino knows is that she'd felt good, and that she's going to feel that way again. Fuck the mission. Fuck Sakura – _you could, you could, you could, she'd let you –_ none of it matters anymore. Life hurts, now. Existing _hurts_. The patch on her arm may as well be a bandage. She wishes she could go back in time, but she can't, so instead she wishes only to find that closeness again. She needs people, thoughts, minds touching, kissing, fucking, _anything_ but the emptiness like death's hand clutching at her skull.

Satoshi finds her first. He always seems to.

"Hey, princess," he whispers in her ear. Even that is a pale imitation of what it'd been three weeks ago.

Maybe it's because she hadn't known what else could be. The breath on her ear and the feel of him pressed against her had been thrilling – she thought it'd been one of the best feelings in the world, and then she slept with him, and that'd been even better – sex is a link of human life, a bondage of mortality, a reminder of start and _finishcyclingeverandeveryinherbrain_ – and then she did it again, and again, but even that's lost it's joy. She needs something else now. Something _more_. Anything at all.

"Satoshi," she whines, pulling him close. She can feel his grin against her cheek and it's predatory and she doesn't care. She's giving him what he wants and she doesn't _care_. "I need – I need – "

"I know," he murmurs. His hands slide down her body to squeeze her ass, and when he picks her up, she wraps her legs around him _tight_.

It's like distant lightning. It should be closer.

Why can't it be closer?

He kisses her as he carries her through the throng of people. The sounds fade. Why? The music… she misses it. But then her head hits something soft, a pillow, and a mattress under that, and there are only three floors in this warehouse, and none of them have bedrooms, Ino thinks, but it's all washed out like someone's gone and bleached her brain. Only three floors, only three rooms – so where are they?

Satoshi is tearing at her clothes. She hears the fabric rip and it excites that spark in her – _yes, please, please_ – and she wants to cradle it to her chest, breathe on it until it ignites inside her like a full-blown fire. Satoshi can give that to her. This is better. It's getting better. It has to be, she insists, because if it doesn't, she's just going to melt into the floor and _die_. Die, die, die.

It's the sixth sense of the Rapture that warns her there are other people in the room. She's so grateful to have that ability back – to be able to _feel-know_ people in a sense beyond the five she's learned – that she doesn't care about the others. Whatever will make it real again.

"Nice catch, Satoshi," somebody growls. Somebody close to her. Somebody whose erection is pressed against her lips.

She still doesn't care. _Anything. Anything._

(In the recesses of her mind that she can hardly hear, a doubtful voice reminds her, _aren't you the one that caught him? Isn't that how it's supposed to be?_ But Ino is lost and gone and far away and she says, _**this**_ _is how it's supposed to be._ )

There are many men here. Maybe half-a-dozen. Maybe more. Ino can't tell. She's got one in her mouth, two in her hands, and the one inside of her is sending hot waves of pleasure through her body, enough to make her stomach drop and her muscles clench as she cums, and it fills her, and _he_ fills her, solid and then liquid as he groans guttural noise-sound-words in her ears, but she's so _empty_ still.

Where is it? Where _the fuck is it_? The feeling she needs, the _connection_. Intimacy on a godly level that she can't reach, not anymore. _Why why whywhywhy –_

Satoshi tips her backwards so her back is against his chest. He fucks her until she cums again and it's like, for an instant, her mind is catapulted heavenward straight out of her body, and when she reaches her hands up, she can almost, _almost_ hit the edge of that place, the edge of the world above her, but she _can't_. She rides him and sucks and fucks and swallows and fills until her body is liquid, useless muscles and fluids and shaking with dumb pleasure. Ino is determined. Whatever it takes, she'll do it.

Only, it doesn't work.

The men are gone. Satoshi is gone. The ocean and the blue and the rippling pool of _human-thought-being-essence_ that she'd already only clung to by the barest thread is gone.

All she has is the pile of patches at her feet. Six. One for each man.

The Rapture taught her that, no matter what she'd thought before, she'd always been alone, and then the drugs changed that. But Ino is alone again. Only now, she knows what it was like to be really _not_ alone.

And the absence hurts more than she thought anything ever could.


	7. Day 1

**Day 1:**

Ino comes back from the party with a wealth of information and a spring in her step that has her spinning whimsically around the room.

The dealer's name is Satoshi. She'd managed to catch his eye, and to her best estimation, she'll have him hook, line and sinker by the second week.

"You work fast," Sakura comments, watching with amusement as Ino flops dramatically onto the mattress.

"What can I say? I'm irresistible."

"You and your big head."

"I thought that was my line."

Sakura rolls her eyes. Ino is in a splendid mood – the rumors about the Rapture do not disappoint, apparently. She looks like she feels lighter than air, like she could just dissolve into the ether and become one with the universe.

It's very entertaining. It's also a little worrying. That is how addiction works, after all – take drug, feel good, repeat.

It's not like Ino isn't an expert at mental control, but Sakura still feels the need to ask.

"Hey, Ino?"

"Hmm?"

"Don't disappear on me, alright?"

Sakura tries to sound as nonchalant as possible, but the worry is evident in the fact that she's asking at all. Ino just laughs, though.

"Don't worry, Forehead. You can't get rid of me that easily."


	8. Day 36

**Day 36:**

Ino has been gone for a full twenty-four hours. Sakura's brain is _exploding_.

She wants to scream and throw things. She wants to tear down that fucking, life-ruining drug den and rescue her best friend from the rubble, kicking and screaming like she certainly would be, but Sakura will break both her legs to drag her ass back to Konoha and save her life, if that's what she has to do –

Familiar, much?

Sakura literally slaps herself. The pain reverberates across her face like a spreading fire, and the moment of clarity that follows is much needed. It's also terribly brief.

 _Does everything have to be about Sasuke?!_

She understands Naruto so much more now, but by virtue of that, she also understands exactly how ridiculous it'd been to make him promise to bring Sasuke home all those years ago. Not that he wouldn't have nearly died trying anyway. That reckless determination is something Sakura knows bitterly well now.

Yet, once again, she's somehow unable to do a damn thing to help. Barging in there will do nothing but ruin their mission, or worse, depending on who and what awaited her. She might get them both killed. Ino's hard work would be for nothing – the eight patches they've collected would be a poor consolation prize in comparison to taking down the drug ring and solving the mysteries surrounding it.

None of this logic keeps Sakura from panicking, though. This is how it starts – this is symptomatic. People leave, and then they come back, and then they _stop_ coming back, and what if Ino never, ever comes back? What if she's _dead_?!

 _Call the coast guard! Call the army!_ The stupid, hysterical part of her mind screams, to which she screams back, _I_ _ **am**_ _the army!_

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

Just a little over a month, and she's losing her grip like she's clutching at smoke, trying to cradle it in her hands, and Ino is a shadow of the person she'd been when they left, and it's as baffling as it is tragic.

How did they _get_ here? How has this _happened_?

Sakura is supposed to be the one whose mental faculties are intact enough to answer that question, but she can't. Time blurs and warps and makes no sense after so many days of emotional distress, after over a month of seeing practically nothing but the inside of this bare room. Is time passing at all? How could she possibly know the answer to that question? All she knows is that the dripping of the sink is weirdly timed in three-count beats, that there are sixty-four tiles on the shower wall and thirty-eight planks of wood making up the floor, and she has lost her God. Damn. Mind.

So has Ino.

"It shouldn't be like this," she mutters, deepening the grooves she's already made in the floor from long nights of pacing. "I'm supposed to be the back-up plan, the one who was _supposed_ to solve this damn thing _weeks_ ago and – and I'm talking to myself."

Sakura stops abruptly. The silence in the room is achingly loud. It used to be that there was a voice who would answer her at times like this, that section of her mind she'd compartmentalized as a child.

Long gone, though. Now, she's all alone, and even if Ino comes back, she'll _still_ be alone, because it's not really Ino that's coming back. If she does at all.

The Ino _she_ knows wouldn't have left her here, totally distraught, without teasing her back into the comforts of anger and witty banter. That Ino wouldn't have left for this long at all, and she would've never used Sasuke against her, and she'd never sidestep her pride to sleep with someone for _drugs_ of all things, if she didn't have to – she'd be right here, right now, saying, _"Suck it up, Forehead! Just because you're the Hokage's apprentice doesn't mean you can write me off like that! I'll be fine!"_

Sakura would believe her, too. Ino knows herself well. Her confidence is huge and hard earned, and she has the skills to back it up, so the fact that it's been weeks since Ino told her that she's fine is undeniably meaningful.

She's not fine. She's caught in the clutches of the most addictive drug Sakura has ever heard of, doing things that would've made her kick her own ass in shame a month ago, mission or not. And Sakura is leaning heavily towards "not." She isn't sure that Ino has thought about the mission for a long time now.

But when Ino at last returns to their hotel room at three in the morning, twenty-six hours after she left, she still drops five patches at Sakura's feet before collapsing on the mattress.

Her clothes are ripped. Her hair is undone and left in unruly waves down to her waist – the snapped hairband is tangled in a knot by her shoulder. She smells like sex and booze and sweat, and her lips are swollen, and five is suddenly a bigger number than Sakura's ever given it credit for. No – not five. Six. Her heart sinks. She watches Ino pull another from her pocket and lick it, slapping it on her arm with such nonchalance that Sakura doesn't even think to stop her.

"What…" The words get caught in Sakura's mouth, all trying to escape at once and jamming in her throat. Ino's eyes slide over to her. If she'd looked defensive, or angry, Sakura might've just given up to avoid the fight. But she just looks sad. Tired. Like she's lived a full life and died and been brought back to do it all over again.

"Ino, what did – how did you –"

She shrugs. She doesn't even attempt to find a reason for it, and Sakura's anger, built up from her frenzied worry and indignation, cracks a little bit at that.

Yamanaka Ino once pulled her from the pits of self-loathing and taught her how to live in this world. This woman on this mattress, indifferent to her own slow death, once made the earth turn, in Sakura's eyes. If she dies, what will happen to the universe she's built up around her? What will happen to _Sakura_?

She'll do everything in her power to never find out. "I'm not letting you do this anymore," Sakura says firmly.

"It's for the mission."

Sakura isn't having it.

"Not this – it isn't. Not anymore. If you were in your right mind, you would never freely prostitute yourself for drugs, Ino. You value yourself too much to be doing what you're doing, and I'd be a shitty best friend if I didn't stop you now."

She waits for Ino to jump up and shout at her, to scream that she's doing her best and it's working – or at least to tell Sakura to stop being such a sap – but she doesn't. She just sighs. Her eyes close and she may as well be talking to the ceiling.

"You don't understand," she mutters. "Maybe it's not part of the mission, but it's an effect of the drug. You know I can't help that."

"But this wasn't supposed to happen!" Sakura is shouting and she wishes she weren't. It's only going to rile both of them up, but she can't stop. Somehow, the volume of her voice and the amount of tears in her eyes are inversely related, and she doesn't want to cry more than she doesn't want to scream. "You were supposed to be able to handle this – that's why we're here together! What about all that mental fortitude Tsunade-sama praised you for? Can't you go into your head and just –"

Ino at last looks angry. "If I were able to do that, don't you think I would've done it already?"

"No. I don't." Sakura takes a step forward, and then another, slowly, until she's standing over the mattress. "That's the thing about being an addict. You avoid the things that make you able to stop because you don't really want to."

She's surprised to feel Ino still has the strength to yank her down by the wrist. Startled, Sakura's knees hit the ground with a painful thud, and Ino sits up so fast that her head feels inverted, but she doesn't let it show. She can only hold the wrist in her hand for so long, though. The drug is coursing through her and Sakura's skin is hot, and soft, and Ino is pissed, but somehow that anger is just proof of the connection she feels like a force of nature, that thing Sakura shapes inside her that she can't describe.

Ino drops her wrist. "Do you honestly think," she says flatly, astoundingly lucid, "that I enjoy doing what I'm doing?"

"I…"

"Come on, Sakura. I hate this," she gestures at the room around them, the peeling paint and the black mold on the ceiling, and then her own body. "I hate _me_ right now, but you said it yourself. I can't exactly just stop when I want to. That's not how it works."

"But… sleeping with – with those guys? I mean, do you have to, if you don't actually want to? We definitely have enough patches now, and if it's not really for the mission, then… Isn't there… something else you can do, to keep yourself grounded…?" Sakura trails off. Her anger is tempered by Ino's sudden level-headedness, granted by a hard won tolerance she wishes she didn't have, and in its absence, all of Sakura's bold conclusions and brazen words vaporize like water in a hot pan.

Ino is waiting for her to finish the thought, but she can't. All the blood in Sakura's body is making a new home in her face.

"You still don't get it," Ino explains. "I may not have to have sex, but I _do_ have to take the drugs, and do I have to go to the parties, so it basically amounts to the same thing. I need people – closeness – _something_. I can't just make it go away on its own, and when I try, it feels like someone's unthreading me – Sakura?"

Sakura still doesn't answer though. Her face is redder than her t-shirt – which is as red as most of her clothes – and her eyes keep darting around the room like a cat following a laser pointer. She won't look at Ino, even when Ino cranes her neck to try and meet Sakura's wandering gaze. _What the_ , Ino thinks, amused and mildly exasperated. She's just sitting there, all tongue-tied and flustered like they're ten-years-old again and passing Sasuke in the halls of the Academy –

Oh.

Oh, no.

"You don't really mean that," Ino deadpans. It's not a question. What Sakura is offering is more than just tempting to her over-stimulated brain, every nerve in her body sensitized and primed and craving – but there's no way. It's just drugs. What Sakura is feeling is just stress and pity, and Ino knows that she would do anything, _anything_ , for a friend who needed her, no matter how badly she didn't want to, with that big heart of hers. Too big for someone so fragile.

 _Do it!_ Her drug-brain urges, that frustrating chorus of cheering miniatures in her mind's eye, all garbled in the imagery formed by burnt-out neurons. _So close! Feel good, closer is better touch her it'll be better than anything ever don't you want to feel good –_

No. Ino digs her nails into her thigh as hard as she can, hard enough to draw blood. She can't do that. She can't just use Sakura to satiate drug-induced cravings – she can't take what her best friend has coveted for years in all her misguided, ideologically questionable and endearingly naïve fantasies.

 _It's_ _ **Sakura**_ _, for fuck's sake. Come on._

Sakura is always a step away from falling apart. Ino doesn't want to be the reason why.

Even now, Sakura is clearly second-guessing herself. Her shoulders slump at the lack of affirmative response. "I want to help," she admits embarrassedly. "I'm just stuck in this room all day, unable to figure anything out, and you're out there getting hurt, risking your life, just like you said, and I…"

"You don't actually want to do this. Don't be an idiot."

"You don't know that," Sakura mutters, arms crossed like a petulant child.

 _Please don't ask me again_ , Ino thinks so forcefully that she hopes Sakura can somehow hear it. She wipes her sweaty palms on the butt of her pants and clings to any scrap of reason she can find. There aren't many.

 _So much love so sweet this girl can't even believe she'd do this don't –_

If she were drunk, these sorts of garbled emotions would probably result in her throwing an arm over Sakura's shoulders and wailing about how much she loves her, and they should totally hang out more, and how dumb were they for ending their friendship over a boy?

Not on this drug. No sir. Ino wants to marry her and have her babies.

Despite her wishes, however, Sakura is determined to press the point, no matter how embarrassing it is to prostrate herself like this. Her brain is all soupy and muddled from the last month. She can't tell left from right in her own heart anymore, and she can't tell what feelings are real and what aren't, but there are still the facts.

And the fact is that it's Ino, and Ino has always been the only constant in her life. As people come and go, as they leave and die around them, for missions, retribution, wives, husbands and hobbies, they've somehow always wound up alone – together. They've always had each other even when they thought they didn't.

It's surprisingly easy now, in the face of the last thirty-six days, to come to the conclusion that she's never made a more meaningful bond in her life. Others were one-sided, imbalanced, painful, laced with bitterness at her mistakes or theirs. She loves Naruto like a brother. She's still not sure if he's ever really forgiven her for putting that weight on his shoulders so long ago.

In the end, she's known no one better, loved no one longer, than Ino.

It's slipping through her fingers now, though, like liquid through a sieve, but that's how it works, isn't it? Life's ironies. It's only when the water is drained that you find what's underneath it.

"Sakura."

"Listen," she interjects, fiercely clutching her resolve, "I know – I know it's not exactly a good substitute, okay? This is – I'm not – I know you think I'm unattractive, and to be honest, I have no idea what's going on in my head anymore, but I meant what I said. I know you'd hate yourself for doing this if you were sober, and I want to help, so if you think it might keep you from – doing something you'd find repulsive – then, I'm telling you, just –"

Ah, shit.

Fuck this. There's only so much Ino can take. She can literally feel the thing that she's been searching for rolling off Sakura in waves, and when she at last tosses good sense to the wind and more or less throws the other woman onto their mattress, it feels like the very first time she'd slipped that patch on. Only better. Not just part of a whole, anymore, but both at once. It's not like at the club, either, where the entire world seems to extend from her fingertips in a massive, interconnected web. It's different. It's good different.

But laced in all that intense emotion is a solemn reminder. She's not sure anymore if it's because of the drugs, or if it's because of the way her mind is primed to receive thoughts, or if it's just because it's _them_ , but she can feel the curiosity, the apprehension, the love and loyalty all wavering unsteadily in Sakura's indecision. Ino is right. Sakura really _isn't_ sure – she's just determined to do this anyway. Which is fine. Ino couldn't stop either way.

Still, she's determined to preserve – whatever it is of Sakura's she feels needs preserving. The protectiveness she's always carried is still there, reminding her in whispered mantra, _she's hurt, don't hurt her, she's hurt, don't hurt her, she's…_

So Ino does only what her body demands and no more.

Which isn't what Sakura was expecting. Hoping for? She doesn't know anymore. She's flat on her back and Ino climbs on top of her, both of them fully clothed. The touches are long and lingering and meaningful, fingertips ghosting up her ribcage, the press of lips against the base of her neck, but Ino doesn't kiss her. She's grinding her body down onto Sakura's thigh and her body heat, the friction is _so much not enough_ through their clothes, but it is for Ino, apparently. She's whispering nonsense in Sakura's ear, making her shiver and reminding her that they can be this close, maybe closer, but they're not quite together. Not with Ino's mind where it is.

"Beautiful," Ino mutters. "So… much… don't…"

Sakura only registers half of the words. Most of her brain is devoted to keeping the fragmented things in her head, pieces of thoughts and feelings as sharp as glass, from spilling out of her mouth. She's wondering if Ino knows that she has no idea what's happening. She's worried that she should be doing something. She's thinking about whether or not she's supposed to be thinking this hard, and why can't her brain just shut up, and is there a reason, the thought sneaks its way in, that Ino won't kiss her?

Her body learns to respond in spite of the buzzing in her brain, and her hands find their way to the back of Ino's thighs, pulling her closer. She's determined to fight her way to the plane of existence that the woman on top of her inhabits, but she knows she can't get there. They're experiencing a totally different event. She's not sure which is real, or if either of them are, and the thought makes her heart hurt and her head ache.

When Ino tenses and shudders and whispers her name in her ear, Sakura stills completely as the fragile things she'd been trying to stuff back into her mind clatter around her. Her eyes water.

It's drugs. Why is she being such a damn idiot? Ino is so, so _fucked up_ right now, and Sakura is just – what she's always been. A delusional romantic.

She pushes the heels of her palms into her eyes and grits her teeth.

If someone went back in time and told Sakura that her first sexual experience would be with her drugged up and recently gangbanged best friend, she might've _literally_ shit herself in disbelief.

Not real. This is not real.

"Alright. Okay," she sighs wearily, gently separating herself from Ino and going to the door. "That's enough, I think."

The glazed over look on Ino's face doesn't dissipate. "Er… wha?"

 _I,_ Sakura thinks plainly, looking at the limp form on the mattress, _am pathetic._

She approaches Ino and kneels beside her. Runs a hand over her face. Almost kisses her and doesn't, because she's stupid, but she's not _that_ stupid.

"…Sakura?"

"I'm calling it," Sakura answers, her fingers sliding down Ino's jawline to her neck. "No more drugs."

Ino does not have time to protest, although she looks like she fully intends to do that, before Sakura squeezes that funny point at the base of her neck. She's out like a light.

Sakura gathers the fallen patches. She removes the eight others from her travel bag, picks up the five on the floor, and even goes so far as to scrape the leftover residue from her chemical analysis, and then wonders where she can hide them in this barren room.

In a stroke of genius, she puts them in a plastic bag and sews it into her shirt.


	9. Day 19

**Day 19:**

Ino is out partying and Sakura is up late decoding a letter. This may as well just be a normal Saturday night, she thinks wryly.

An hour later, she looks down at her handy work and frowns. The letter from Tsunade is disappointingly short.

 _Results are the same here. No good news. Have you managed IR on an unused sample? The active substance may be undetectable in the blood due to binding of organic compounds. I can imagine a few ways one might distort results that way when faced with most urine/blood tests._

And lastly,

 _Have you considered other possibilities?_

The final question is a little bewildering. Other than the dozens of tests she's run on Ino's various bodily fluids, the chakra scans, and the little information she managed to glean from the used patches, she can't think of any other way to go about this. Whatever is causing the effects of the Rapture is impressively elusive. When they find its creator, she might have to shake his hand before she rips it off.

Sakura grabs a pen and paper to prepare a response. At least the first parts, she can address.

 _Shishou,_

 _No luck on that end. We haven't been able to procure such a sample as of yet, but progress has been made, and that will likely come soon – I hope. I've considered that the active substance may be obscured in such a way, but there are no unusual disturbances in protein levels that might suggest such a thing, other than the obvious hormonal dysfunction in serotonin/dopamine reuptake. If that is the case, I have nowhere to begin in terms of finding a way to isolate it._

 _What do you mean, "other possibilities"?_

 _My partner is handling symptoms of addiction well. First two weeks showed few negative behavioral changes. She's lost some weight and shows signs of fatigue now, but nothing dramatic. Her chakra control is still abysmal as of today, and getting worse, along with increasingly elongated times of recovery after each burst. I'm not yet sure if it's something specific to the drug, or the result of the disturbance of physiological functioning overall. Advice?_

 _She does seem to be more urgent about the events, however. I'm worried that the addiction may be getting the best of her whether she admits it or not. She leaves quickly and spends little time here compared to the first two weeks. I'm worried that it might be me, and not the effect of the drugs. I'm not sure if I've done something wrong. With her heightened empathy and intensified emotions, I find that we're able to communicate in a more honest way than previously, now that we're not fighting all the time, and I'm worried that she's avoiding me now because –_

The pen stops. Sakura slaps a hand to her forehead.

"Damnit," she berates herself aloud.

It's not a diary entry, and she's not a schoolgirl that _needs_ to sit around and _write_ diary entries to sort out her feelings, anyway. …Even if that's how it's beginning to feel.

She crumples the letter, perhaps with a bit more vigor than needed, and starts again. The new one is short, to the point, and entirely professional when she seals it and sends it off.

Sakura flops down on the mattress. She picks up one of the books she'd brought and has already read twice. It's hardly a good distraction.

Tsunade hadn't even _asked_ about Ino, and she'd gone ahead and written her half a novel about the girl and the weird things going on in her own head. It's true that she's been getting a little bit mixed up lately, what with all the time they've spent together, and how easy and sometimes thoughtlessly intimate the conversations are, but Sakura has always had rather volatile emotions.

She _has_ been known to snap at people at the slightest provocations, or become fiercely attached to ideas to the point of near obsession, and… well, it makes sense. The stress of this mission and her frustrations at being unable to untangle this mystery are probably adding to her warped perceptions. Ino's safety being constantly jeopardized probably isn't helping either.

To make matters even worse, she's going stir crazy. While she _could_ henge to hide her distinctly unnatural hair color and go out, it's not like there's anything to do outside this room other than eat or sit at a bar and get drunk, which she wouldn't do anyway, and especially not while on a mission. She's hardly left this room in the past nineteen days. It's probably not doing her sanity any favors.

Sakura gives up on the novel. How can Kakashi read the same book so many times without getting bored, she wonders. She checks the time: one-thirty. Good. Ino will be back in a little over an hour – and that's another thing, Sakura thinks, piling up arguments. Being cooped up in this room and constantly attending to Ino's physical and mental health basically means that her life for the past few weeks, and for the foreseeable future, more or less revolves around the other woman. So, it makes sense, this weird attachment she's forming.

Not that they haven't always been attached, she concedes. It's just a little different. Now she finds herself occasionally second-guessing her words in a way she wouldn't have a few weeks ago. Watching her friend go through this high-stakes, tumultuous experience constantly reminds her of the reasons why she's always had such strong admiration for her – admiration she won't admit out loud, of course – and all those personality traits, the quirks and Ino's sense of humor, have become doubly obvious. Ino is strong-willed and confident and naturally charismatic. She injects humor in places Sakura would never think to, even despite this life-threatening situation, and she's sure of herself and her feelings in a way that Sakura never has been. Ino is the master of her own mind. Sakura struggles just to keep hers in check most of the time.

So, there's already their long and emotionally intense friendship, the fact that they've never been on a mission alone together, the circumstances… there are a lot of reasons why Sakura suddenly feels the need to sort out her thoughts via journal like an adolescent school girl with a crush.

Now she just has to figure out whether or not that makes them any less real.


	10. Day 42

**Warning:** Semi-explicit sex scene. Meaning, I use the word "nipple."

* * *

 **Day 42:**

The water from the showerhead sprays down like a thousand little bells chiming a thousand quiet sounds. It feels like voices whispering in her ears, comforting and kind and warm – warmer than she thought, before the patch – and maybe that'd been not very nice of her, to assume the water wasn't all that warm. It's trying it's best.

She doesn't know what expression she's making, but it's apparently very amusing. Ino laughs quietly and pushes herself off the floor of the tub, and the wet, sliding skin of their legs brushing makes Sakura shudder from head to toe with a startling sensation she can't name. Ino crawls forward and that feeling grows, enough to make her teeth chatter as the woman on top of her presses their chests together in a sensation of _warm-good-close_. She can feel Ino's heartbeat and it sounds like it wants to say something. Being this close together is like a discovery; it reminds her of that wholly satisfying feeling she gets when she finds a breakthrough in the lab or with a patient after weeks of hard work, only better. Oddly, it makes her want to dance.

When Ino presses their lips together, it's simultaneously the most erotic and the most soothing thing that's ever happened to her. _Stop-go_ , _stop-go_ , just like her heartbeat.

"You've never kissed anyone, right?" Ino is asking her, but not in a mean way. It's not condescending, and Sakura knows that because she can literally _feel_ the intent like a breeze on her skin. All of Ino's rambling about interconnectedness suddenly makes sense.

Sakura doesn't trust her voice. She shakes her head.

Ino seems to be thinking about it, worried, and it makes Sakura worry, too, but only for a moment, and then they're kissing again. _It's okay_ , Sakura tries to tell her without speaking. Her hands trail down Ino's back reassuringly. Their kisses are long and sweet and she's come a very long way in search of this, she thinks, even if she can't remember it right now, all for this feeling. She doesn't know what she's doing or how to do it, and some part of her is still scared and unsure, but Ino doesn't _care_ about those flaws.

There is no striving. No begging for attention from boys that don't give a damn, no making up for stupid mistakes, no running through gauntlets to prove anything. It's just what it is, and it's enough to make her cry.

"S'okay," Sakura forces herself to say aloud when Ino hesitates. Her voice is heavy with emotion that she hopes will cross this distance.

She fists her hands in Ino's long, wet hair, arching her back with a shuddering gasp as she tries to get closer to that feeling, to the hands sliding over her stomach, her hips, the warm lips at her neck, all of it forcing the air from her lungs in a long, pained whine.

 _It's okay_ , she urges at Ino's questioning look. She lifts her arms to remove the soaking shirt from her body. Their bare skin pressed together satiates a craving she only realizes she has because now it's satisfied, and then more than that, when Ino makes a path of kisses from her lips to her chin, down to her neck, one hand planted firmly on Sakura's hip and the other at last sliding up to her breast, lightly pulling the nipple between her fingertips and making Sakura's body jerk underneath her.

Her head falls back and bumps into the wall behind her. The world spins a little, and it feels like she's falling into something soft and warm and wonderful. Ino nuzzles her stomach and lays her head there for a moment, her fingers finding Sakura's, pulling her hand to her mouth. She kisses the back of it with such tender reverence that Sakura has to bite her lip and squeeze her eyes shut, but the sob escapes her anyway. Ino does it again, the back of her hand, the inside of her wrist, and then there are fingers hooking around the waistband of her pants, catching her panties and tugging them both off. The pile of sopping clothes is tossed onto the bathroom floor and quickly forgotten.

Sakura's breath hitches when Ino at last kisses her way up her leg to her inner thigh and stops. She struggles to open her eyes. Ino is looking up at her, curious – laughing a little, but kindly, at the extent of emotion on her face – waiting for something.

Sakura finds her hand and holds it. Squeezes. _It's okay_.

There's the press of lips. Sakura inhales sharply, and when Ino pushes her tongue against her, she can't tell if the noise she makes is a sob or a scream, but it must be a good thing, because she can feel Ino shudder against her shaking thighs, and she wonders if it always feels this good, or if it's the drugs.

She decides it doesn't matter. The drugs don't matter. The fact that they're in the bathroom of a dingy hotel doesn't matter, and neither does the fact that they're supposed to be on a mission. None of it. This is better than the best thing she ever let herself fantasize about, and even if it hadn't been Ino in her head before, that doesn't matter either, because it works this way. It makes _sense._ Ino is her first everything – friend, confidant, fight, kiss, first _this_ – and there's no one else she trusts more to lead her through uncharted territory.

Her muscles tense and the back of her eyelids explode with color, and she's actually _glad_ that she has no control over her chakra or she might've just killed herself by accident when she slams her head into the wall again. The first deep breath she can take feels like the first deep breath after being underwater for a long time, or after the first snowfall, satisfying enough to make her conclude that she must've been struggling to breathe for years before this. When she opens her eyes, Ino is leaning over her. She looks thoroughly amused in a way that makes Sakura blush. As if all the blood in her body wasn't already busy being elsewhere.

"W-what…?"

Ino shakes her head, grinning. "Nothing."

In the brief moment of clarity between first times and second times, Sakura has the very troublesome thought that perhaps she should be worried about the fact that two operatives on an incredibly important assignment are now more committed to the drugs than the mission. She's not worried at all, though.


	11. Day 13

**Day 13:**

"Alright, alright…" Ino takes a moment to let her giggles subside. They're sitting side by side with their backs to the wall. She'd insisted they remain upright. Something about postures and tides that Sakura couldn't make sense of. "What about –"

"If you say Akamaru again, I'm going to hit you," Sakura warns, though she's smiling. "That joke's only funny the first three times."

"I wasn't!" She insists. "What about Rock Lee?"

Sakura makes a face. And not an _"I like that idea"_ kind of face. "Lee? I know he used to like me, but –"

"Used to? Please, Forehead. He'd sell every jumpsuit he owns for a date with you."

"Too bad he's the only one…"

Ino raises an eyebrow. "You know, if you put yourself out there once in a while…"

"I'm too busy for that."

"You sure do find time to complain about it."

"But – well, yeah, but I –"

Ino bumps their shoulders amicably to let her know she's only teasing. "Answer the question."

"Fine, fine…" Sakura tilts her head back to stare at the ceiling. If she could imagine a future with Lee… "I think I'd learn to love him, to be honest. And he'd definitely make me happy or die trying." Ino laughs at that. "We'd probably go on a lot of sappy, romantic dates, and he'd probably do a lot of really awkward things with the best of intentions, and eventually we'd have a weird looking kid with a gigantic forehead and proportionately large eyebrows."

"Oh, God," Ino wipes the mirthful tears from her cheeks. "He's so energetic. Can you imagine sex with him?"

Sakura squeezes her eyes shut. "Absolutely not."

Ino, snickering, "I guess you can't really imagine sex with anyone, huh?"

"H-hey! I _read_ , you know…"

Her lame defense does nothing but send Ino into a fit of hysterical giggling that's so bubbly and harmless Sakura can't even be offended. She finds herself smiling despite being laughed at. It helps, of course, that she knows the Rapture has totally thwarted any genuine feelings of condescension in the other girl. Ino can't be anything _but_ happy right now, and it makes for some rather interesting, uninhibited, lighthearted conversations.

Well, it's not exactly _Ino_ , per se, considering the drugs. Or maybe it's just a different a part of her. Either way, Sakura finds she's become rather attached to these talks.

"Don't tell me," Ino says once her laughter's died down a little. "Have you picked up your sensei's dirty habits?"

"The _Star Swept_ series isn't _that_ dirty…"

"The what? I was talking about Kakashi and _Icha Icha_ – wait." Her eyes light up mischievously. "Don't tell me that Tsunade-sama reads dirty books too?!"

"They're _romantic_ , Pig. They're not porn or anything –"

Ino lifts her hands to her mouth in theatrical surprise. "You've totally read them all."

"Well… I mean…"

"Sakura."

Sakura chances a look. Ino is smiling from ear to ear. "What?"

"How many?"

"…There's only twelve books – it's really not that many, when you consider the complexity of the plot, and there are only a few sex scenes in the whole – quit laughing!"

Ino doesn't, though. It's just so _fitting_ that Sakura would devote so much of her precious time to cheesy romance novels, of all things. Eventually, fed up with her own embarrassment, Sakura nudges her in the hopes that she'll at last quit teasing, but Ino merely tips sideways and laughs into her shoulder instead. The touch becomes be too much too fast, and Ino pulls away to a more careful distance.

"I'm not really laughing at you for reading them," Ino explains once she can speak again. "It just suits you so well that it's funny, is all."

"Yeah… I know."

Sakura smiles despite herself, but it quickly drops the more she thinks about it. She's always been the romantic type, and it suits her in that way... In another, more depressing way, it also suits her because of the distinct lack of romance in her _own_ life. It's like adopting a dog because you can't get a boyfriend, she thinks.

"Aw, don't get sad on me, Forehead," Ino whines half-heartedly. She grabs Sakura's hand with painful slowness, ignoring the way the drugs in her system burst like a cosmic collision under her skin. Sakura tenses a little, remembering the effects, but Ino forces herself to at least look like she has it under control. She's determined to make sure Sakura knows she's being sincere. "I know I make fun of you for it, but really, it's okay to wait for something worth your time, no matter what people tell you. You deserve it."

Sakura sighs. She can't help the cynicism after so long. "Deserve to wait forever, you mean…"

"Don't twist my words," Ino chides. "That's not what I meant. You deserve someone worth the wait because you _are_ someone worth the wait. I bet there's some handsome man out there reading _Star Sweepers_ –"

" _Star Swept_."

"Right – and thinking of someone exactly like you. So don't get all pouty, okay?"

It's hard to imagine. Sakura closes her eyes and tries to picture that man, but it's difficult to see his face. It's just a blank silhouette. "Do you really think so?"

"I do." Ino smiles at her confidently. Sakura can't help but trust her, and it's all warm and tingly feelings of friendship right up until Ino says mischievously, "And if not, there's always Akamaru."

"Pig! You – why – ugh …"

Maybe Ino is right. Maybe not. Either way, she thinks as Ino's contagious laughter at last forces her own, if this type of companionship is anything like being in a loving relationship, it'll be worth the wait.


	12. Day 46

**Day 46:**

Is the cure love?!

It's a dumb thought. It's also the only explanation Sakura has.

They're halfway through their stash of patches, there's an unopened letter from Tsunade sitting in the corner of the room, and they're both sprawled on the mattress together, totally nude, but none of that is the _weird_ part.

The weird part is that, despite being patched-up for four days now, Sakura still has no idea what Ino means when she talks about being at the parties, and the oceans, and the amalgamations of human existence, and the flowing rivers. Ino keeps trying to explain it to her, but it's too abstract. Sakura can't wrap her head around it. Still, Ino maintains that she _has_ to be feeling it. That's what the Rapture is, she insists – water in an ocean. But Sakura doesn't feel it at all.

The other weird thing is that the weakness apparent in Ino's body from the third day hasn't manifested in Sakura to any detectable degree. Her chakra writhes in her body while on the drug, almost as if it's trying to wriggle from her skin like a molting snake, but she finds it fully intact between patch-ups. Ino's chakra reserves degraded constantly over time and never seemed to fully stabilize.

In fact, Ino seems to get getting _better_. At least mentally. She's no longer itching to run back to the parties. It's something she credits to Sakura, but Sakura herself isn't sure if she can accept such an answer – not on a scientific level, at least.

If only they could make all these meaningful things actually mean something. In some ways, being on the same plane of thought makes deduction easier.

"It's like…" Ino will say, and then she gives her a look. Not any look in particular, but somehow Sakura understands it anyway as if she'd finished the sentence aloud.

In other ways, though, it's not as helpful. She should be replying to the letter on her desk – Tsunade is going to worry. Soon enough, someone will come looking for them and be understandably disgusted by their pitiable condition, but work is _hard,_ and love is _easy,_ and they spend a lot more time having euphoric sex than doing any productive thinking.

It's okay, though. Sakura is sure they'll figure it out eventually.


	13. Day 48

**Day 48:**

Physical deterioration or not, the withdrawal is still real for them both. Ino, having suffered through four days of it previously, is understandably distraught when they simultaneously realize they've run out of patches.

"I can't do that again," Ino whispers, and the pain in her voice registers in Sakura's ears and seems to amplify in the bloodstream straight to her heart.

They're both lying on the mattress and trying very hard to breathe. Is inhalation really natural? Sakura wonders. Has it ever been? It certainly doesn't feel like it now.

In. Out. In. Out.

She's never had to think to breathe before.

"We should…"

"Can't," Ino shakes her head. "I can't go back there. I can't do that again, either."

Sakura laces their fingers together. "I'll go with you."

It's a stupid decision to do a stupid thing to keep doing other, even more stupid things, but Ino is quietly panicking, and that is worse than anything Sakura could do.

So they go to the party together.

#

Sakura feels eighty-years-old. Her bones hurt, and her joints feel stiffer than the springs of their terrible bed. It takes fifteen minutes just to pull their clothes on. She sincerely hopes nobody will give them trouble on the way there, because she's not sure she can fight right now. It's a definite possibility, though, because they probably look as worn down as they feel, and predators usually pick easy prey…

Ino warns her to keep her eyes on the sidewalk, and so she does, letting Ino guide her by the hand instead. She's whispering instructions and etiquette that Sakura only half hears against the torrential late summer downpour that soaks through their clothes in the first thirty seconds of the walk. By the time they reach the party, she imagines they resemble two stray cats, sodden and lost in the rain.

Thankfully, the bouncers don't seem to care. She sighs with relief the moment the patch hits her arm. That's when she remembers that they're at a party, and parties are supposed to be _fun_ , and that's something she thinks she can do, now.

They're back to their normal selves in less than a minute. …Or, was before normal? She's somewhat lucid, not having suffered the weakness of prolonged use yet, but her thoughts are still ooey gooey. She remembers that Ino somehow managed to keep her mind intact for three times as long as she has. The pride in her chest swells at that. They're barely through the door before Sakura pulls her in and kisses her just for the hell of it, just to show her.

Ino taps her on the shoulder and tilts her head toward a man on the other side of the room: Satoshi. Sakura takes Ino by the wrist and lets her body navigate instinctively to the stairs, climbing up, and up, and up, to the third floor, where Ino stops her in the middle of the room. She spreads her arms out.

 _This_ , is what she's trying to say. This is what she's talking about.

Sakura looks around, confused that she's been stopped, because shouldn't they be going up more? Her eyes travel around the room in search of what Ino is referring to. A couple is entwined on the couch. There's a man grinning dumbly at the ceiling. The dancers grind and sway to the music, hands lifted in revelry, and it takes her a second, but she does feel it.

It's definitely what Ino is talking about, but it's not _exactly_ the same, because there's something else about it, too. Ino stares at her quizzically and Sakura shakes her head, _hold on_ , to try and sort out the things floating in her mind. The thoughts stagger uselessly into each other. Still. There's something.

Maybe it's her precise chakra control. Or, maybe it's the fact that she'd had thirty-odd days of doing scans and analyses on Ino that she can feel the difference now. In the hotel room, Ino's chakra had been haywire, and hers too, like tongues of flame in a soft breeze, flaring uselessly from their bodies. But it's different here.

Something is different.

It's not a fire. Not a fire at all. Her consciousness running from her body, urging her higher, tempting her to hit the apex of experiential awareness, the needle-thin tip of existence as the music thrums, and her heart inflates to bursting with the emotions of these thinking, feeling, sensing _humans_ around her –

No, wait. Sakura shakes her head like a wet dog. Wait a minute.

If only she weren't drugged, she thinks forlornly, but if she weren't drugged then she wouldn't be able to feel it, this magnification of unified minds that Ino has been describing to her. She would never have been able to tell. But it's so damn hard to _think_.

This is important, though. She's sure of it. She hasn't forgotten the mission – it's just hard to care, but the only other thing that Sakura cares about here is Ino, and Ino is with her, so if they're together, then she can think about it. Right?

She hopes that makes sense.

She grabs Ino by the wrist and pulls them into the bathroom, which she notes with some humor is actually cleaner than the one in the hotel. Unfortunately, it's also full of people. They find an empty stall and shut it. Ino doesn't say a word. She leans against the wall and waits, present and close, and that's all Sakura needs, so now she can think about thinking.

No more fires.

Right.

Not a flame, but. Something.

There's a tide of subsistence around her right now. She can literally feel the people in the bathroom, though she can't feel herself, but she knows they're all rising. Floating. But not quite. The feeling is smooth, like being swept away, like –

What Ino said. _Like water_. The people here are trickles of _water_ , of color, all coalescing together. Their minds ascend as one like a plume of steam. Evaporating. Shared states of being combine into this force, a river flowing downstream, amassing, merging, spilling into each other in tiny waterfalls and traveling through the veins of some omnipotent pseudo-arterial network to…

Sakura tilts her head back.

Ocean. Color. Water. Consciousness and merged humanity, blue –

"Oh," she mutters, the realization sliding into her brain like a key in a lock. "Oh."

There is no ceiling. There is no drug.

Ino's tentative voice, "Sakura?"

Sakura's head snaps back down. She's grinning, though it's not really something to be smiling about.

"It's a genjutsu," she says proudly.

No sooner does the last syllable leave her lips than the bathroom door bursts open.

A few things go through her head at once, some useful, some not so much.

 _This is the ladies room_. Not useful.

 _I can't break this genjutsu if I don't have control over my chakra._ Useful.

 _I can't fight._ Not useful.

… _Wait. Yes I can._

Very useful. She suddenly remembers that she doesn't actually _need_ chakra to hit people in the face, which is exactly what she does.

Unfortunately, Satoshi is in full possession of his mental faculties and physical abilities, and he's forming seals, but she's not about to let him finish that. Sakura throws her body weight into him, breaking the sequence mid chain. He's stronger than her. She flails like she hasn't fought a day in her life, throwing him off guard, but eventually he yanks one of her arms out to her side, and then the other, pinning her against the wall at a painful angle, but she's done what she needs to do, anyway.

"Hey."

He turns around. Ino, with not even the slightest urgency, pats him on the cheek. It takes him a second to realize.

His hand flies up to his face to pull the patch off, but it's too late. His chakra streams from his body heavenward, wherever that might be, just like the rest of them.

Together, they take him down easily. They split the fistful of patches from his back pocket and, laughing, at themselves, at the situation, at the absurdity of it all, perhaps, they make their way out of the bathroom to at last finish the mission. Or so they hope.

Ino's body is still weak. Her muscles have deteriorated, and though she doesn't seem to feel the urge to go and seek euphoric relief wherever she can find it since Sakura joined her on this elevated plane, Sakura is still unsure.

"Ino," she says, hoping she can reflect the solemnity this calls for. "Can you… do this?"

But it seems she's not the only one that's got what she needs to think now.

Ino shrugs. "With you."

They step out of the bathroom together.

It's sort of sad. Being connected as they are to all these people, beating up the bouncers and the dealers feels downright cruel, like an insult to the fundamental ideologies of what it means to _be._ All of them struggling in this world just the same despite differing beliefs and methods…

They do it anyway. When all is said and done, the commotion is enough to disrupt the party. The music is cut. The partyers scatter. There's a pile of unconscious bodies in the middle of every floor.

It's eerily quiet in the warehouse now, and she and Ino stare at each other from their own places on the floor. They've taken about half as many hits as they've delivered – which is still a lot. It doesn't help that, with their acutely attuned physical sensitivity, they hurt three times as much as they might've otherwise. It's painful to breathe, and they're still stupidly high, and she's _still_ a trickle of water in a river in an ocean.

The ceiling. They have to get past it.

"Ugh," Ino groans. "This sucks."

Sakura stares upward and blinks rapidly, attempting to see past the spotlights wired above her. This _does_ suck. Can't this just be over? Then they can go back to bed together, to that wonderful thing they've been doing for… ever? Five days? Who knows.

She's so damn tired…

A shadow blocks her vision. She's up in an instant (an instant that actually extends to five whole seconds, though she can't tell), trying to grab Ino's hand to pull her up too, but somehow she just winds up pulling herself _down_ instead. Sakura waits for death, but Ino's rather calm breathing informs her that the danger has passed.

When she turns around, she's pleasantly surprised to find a familiar face.

A very amused, one-eyed familiar face.

"Kakashi-sensei," Sakura smiles at him as if she's just bumped into him on the street, not while flying high as a kite on the floor of a drug den. "What are you doing here? Wait," she frowns. "You don't do drugs, do you? Wait," her frown deepens. "You are _real,_ aren't you?"

"Last I checked."

"Oh…" She trails off, thinking. "…Am I in trouble?"

"That's up to Tsunade-sama," Kakashi tells her amicably. He offers her a hand that she decides she's not ready to take. She sits up slowly and just stares, hoping he'll eventually be compelled to explain himself. It takes a while. "She sent me after you didn't reply to her last letter."

Sakura squints, as if that somehow might sharpen her thoughts rather than her vision. "I got that letter last week. Doesn't that mean you should've arrived three days ago?"

"I did."

"Huh? Why didn't you say anything?"

She can see his grin under his mask. "You seemed busy."

"Oh yeah," Ino snorts. "He's real."

There's a pause as Kakashi's head swivels to observe the empty warehouse and the pile of bodies. He returns his gaze to the two women on the floor, eyebrow raised. "Care to explain?"

Sakura and Ino share a look.

"Well, see, there's this ocean…"

* * *

#

 _Woohoo! Mystery solved! Just the epilogue left, which will be posted by Sunday, or perhaps sooner :)_


	14. Epilogue, Day 62

**Epilogue, Day 62:**

Neither Ino nor Sakura finds out the whole truth until after they recover from withdrawal symptoms. Sakura spends that time gnashing her teeth, avoiding everyone for fear of ripping their heads off, and trying to distract herself with bad TV. The Rapture itself may not have been a drug, but the patches were still laced with opiates and tranquilizers, and their brains were still fried from constant over-saturation of euphoria inducing hormones stimulated by the genjutsu. Not to mention the chakra drain.

Sakura had only experienced it for a few hours. Ino had done it for nearly forty days. Her symptoms are awful enough that on the fifth day, Sakura begs mercy on her behalf. She bows until her head touches the floor when she pleads with Tsunade to let her induce a coma until it's over. The Hokage remained uncertain about taking such drastic measures in Ino's weakened state, but after Ino nearly bit through her cheek during a seizure, she relented.

The good news, however, is that she'll get better. When Tsunade is sure Sakura has recovered enough to hear it, she emphasizes how close they'd gotten to bad news: Ino almost hadn't. Physiologically, she'd been a week from total organ failure due to chronic chakra exhaustion.

The thought is so terrifying that Sakura doesn't even breathe a sigh of relief that they'd stopped in time.

Drugs are not worth it, she decides. She maintains this conclusion even after she once again feels somewhat like a normal human.

 _Never. Again._

It's Tsunade that discloses the details to her, delivered with a very lengthy, very angry lecture about responsibility, personal safety, and drug abuse that Sakura won't forget for a long, long time. The bruise on her shoulder where Tsunade gripped her will be a handy reminder for the next week or so.

Most of the effects they'd attributed to drugs were due to the genjutsu, as Sakura expected. Less obviously, the real purpose of the Rapture, Tsunade explains, was to drain chakra – a proximity ninjutsu reminiscent of Kisame's sword, hence why the dealers only supplied patches on location. They were amassing chakra to store in a vessel. Which is too familiar to be a coincidence.

Sakura fills in the blanks. "They were trying to make a jinchuuruki."

"Yes," Tsunade confirms, her tone grim. "It was a political play. They thought they'd take a page from the Akatsuki's book and hoard power in order to threaten the nations into a forced peace."

Well.

Well, damn.

Sakura hates that the world is filled with lunatics who harbor such convoluted ideologies, but, hey. Helping save the world twice in one lifetime is pretty good – even if it'd been sort of by accident, the second time…

Tsunade finishes her explanation and the physical exam in less than an hour. Sakura, seated on the edge of a hospital bed, waits patiently as her mentor checks her vitals and clears her.

"Despite your baffling lapse in judgment and your horrendously stupid actions," she says pointedly, and Sakura rightfully suspects she will never quite live this down, "you're in good health."

"That's good news," she sighs, genuinely relieved. The past two months are like a dream that she can't quite piece together in any sensible way. Now, at least, she can go home, sleep for a week, and forget this whole thing ever –

"Oh." Tsunade pauses in the doorway. "Also, your girlfriend is awake."

"My –! who – I – we – ah…"

Tsunade smirks, unabashedly amused. "Something wrong, dear student of mine?"

"She's - she's not my…"

"Oh. Sorry." Tsunade scribbles something out on the chart, as if the status of their relationship would be listed there. "I guess you prefer lesbian lover?"

Sakura's blush turns radioactive. If the power goes out they could use her face as a generator.

"Ts-Tsunade-shishou! I – why would – you're –"

 _Good_ , Tsunade thinks. _She deserves it after worrying me sick like that._

"Room 204," she calls out over her shoulder.

Sakura doesn't get up immediately. She wants to see Ino. She also doesn't. Frankly, the thought is terrifying.

She's _pretty_ sure that what happened between them had been real, and she's also pretty sure that she _wants_ it to be real, but now that they're both drug-free, what happens? Do they go back to being friends again and laugh about this five years from now, or – not?

Worst of all, she might walk into that room and find out that none of it had been real after all.

Maybe they _don't_ have a connection. Maybe it really had come down to the drugs, and stress, and circumstances, and all those exhilarating, blissful feelings were nothing more than a trick played on her brain.

Sakura halfway stands up and then stops as something else occurs to her. She briefly considers going straight home and avoiding the visit entirely, because what if she walks into that room and finds out that she's thoroughly in love and Ino is just _not_?

Sakura never, _never_ wants to be that lovesick girl, ever again.

But that's not how it works. She knows that. She'd be lovesick whether she avoided Ino for the rest of her life or was outright rejected, but at least the rejection might give her time to heal. From a broken heart. Again.

 _Is there a third option…?_

She walks as slowly as she can make herself, much to the silent interest of the passing nurses. Their odd looks are given partly because they've no doubt heard about her required absence and detox program, and partly because she's a rather esteemed figure here who has evidently forgotten how to climb stairs.

After everything she's done, though, Sakura is kind of past the point of worrying about her image. If she hadn't shattered her hard-earned respect with the drug addiction, she certainly won't do it by walking like a toddler.

 _Moment of truth_ , she thinks apprehensively at Ino's call to come in.

Sakura enters the room more nervous than she'd been on her first day of training with Tsunade. She's barely through the door, not even giving herself time to register the sight of the woman in front of her, before she speaks.

"Hey," she blurts out instantly, her body primed and ready to jump out the window at the slightest provocation. "How are you feeling?"

Ino briefly raises her eyes from the magazine in her hands. "I've been better."

"I can imagine…"

Ino hums in agreement but appears more interested in her reading material. Sakura forces herself to take a seat by the side of the bed and be patient. She's not about to shove her foot in her mouth – again – if she can help it. But maybe she should just leave. Maybe Ino doesn't want her here, and she's simply trying to find a nice way to say it…

Her hair is loose, for once. Ino somehow managed to keep it glossy and tangle free even throughout their mission, and even in the hospital. Sakura finds herself simultaneously amused and jealous. When she'd worn it herself, maintaining that length took her hours of care and a hundred dollars worth of beauty products. She often makes a point of teasing Ino about the impracticality of it, but in truth, it suits her. It suits _them_. There's symbolism behind their hair, as childish as it seems. From growing it, to cutting it, to running her fingers through it, brushing it out of Ino's eyes, fisting her hands in it...

It's a reliable indicator of their mentalities: the stages of their relationship, where they stand. A reminder of the point at which they'd separated, and the one at which they'd come back together again. At this moment, though, it tells her nothing. They're still the same as when they'd left for the mission over two months ago, and there's nothing – not their hair, not Ino's face, as disinterested as if Sakura weren't in the room at all – to give her any clues.

Sakura can't help but laugh at her thoughts. Maybe she's thinking too hard about this.

Or, maybe, if Ino rejects her, she'll dye her hair black to keep up the metaphor.

"Something funny?"

"Uh, no, no," Sakura clears her throat nervously. "Just thinking."

More silence. Eventually, Ino sighs, a long, impatient sound. She noisily flips a page. "Did you know that Kobayashi Satsuki is retiring?"

Sakura sits up a little straighter. Is this what they're going to do? Avoid the conversation altogether? Is Ino just going to skirt around the issue for the rest of their lives, and maybe they can't even be friends again because their relationship got so fucked up that they'll have to spend eternity constantly avoiding the subject or each other entirely –

Ino is waiting for her to answer. Sakura takes a deep breath and drowns her overactive mind.

"The singer?"

"Yeah. She's holding one last concert in Tanzaku."

"Oh," Sakura registers the information and tries to find the relevance to her rapidly withering hopes. "That's only a day or so away."

"It is," Ino nods. When Sakura doesn't respond, she closes the magazine halfway and at last turns to face her. "Do you want to go?"

"With – with you?"

Ino raises an eyebrow. "Would you prefer someone else?"

"No, no, just – clarifying."

What did she say about putting her foot in her mouth again…?

Ino doesn't seem to care, though. In fact, she puts the magazine down completely, a rather sly grin on her face, and grabs the collar of Sakura's shirt to pull her in for a kiss.

A totally, completely sober one.

It's like being high all over again.

"You can pick me at the gate on Friday morning," Ino says nonchalantly, turning back to the magazine. "I should be well enough to travel then."

Sakura's too busy trying to stop herself from back-flipping to really hear her. "Sure…"

"I imagine you'll get the tickets?"

"Okay…"

"And no more crappy hotels. I'd rather not relive that experience."

"Oh, yeah, of course not…" Sakura blinks. Her brow furrows. Her brain reminds her that she's a human being and not one gigantic beating heart. "Hey, wait a minute…"

"Hm?"

"How come I'm paying for all this stuff?"

"Because, Forehead, that's how you're supposed to treat a _lady_."

"But I'm a lady too, you know," Sakura replies, indignant, but Ino gives her a very specific sort of look that makes her regret her choice of words.

Ino smiles. She even winks, and it's not even cheesy, it just makes Sakura blush at the flood of rather explicit memories.

"How could I forget?"

"AlrightythenseeyouFriday!"

Sakura is gone in an instant. She makes a hasty retreat towards the hospital doors and raps her knuckles against her forehead just to make sure it won't produce a hollow sound.

She's going to have to get over being so easily flustered, or Ino will surely take advantage of it in ways that are probably not conducive to her wallet, or her time. She'll also need to figure out exactly what dating someone like Ino will entail.

 _High maintenance_ are the first two words that come to mind. Satisfying and occasionally emotionally exhausting, much like their friendship. And, most importantly, just as real.

But there will inevitably be lots of petty squabbling.

…Probably lots of make up sex.

Yeah. Sakura can live with that.

* * *

#

 _A/N: Sorry it's a day late! And thanks to everyone who's joined me for this bumpy ride! Your presence, honest feedback, and encouraging comments are forever and greatly appreciated. :)_


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